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FOR READING THAT’S DIFFERENT

NOVA AND SUPERNOVA

The Crab Nebula in Taurus (By Courtesy
of Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar Observatories)

A. E. ROY, B.Sc., Ph.D., F.R.A.S., F.B.I.S.

A postman on his rounds just before dawn glances at the familiar stars
and notices a bright star where yesterday there was none. And on receipt
of the news, observatories all over the world spring into action to photo-
graph the new star — the nova — to register its rapidly-changing spectrum for
future study, and to dig through photographic records of that part of the
sky to find out what occupied the region in which the nova now burns
bright.

The name “ nova ” has stuck though it is a misnomer. The star now
radiating with an intensity 25,000 times greater than that of the Sun has
formerly been an obscure member of the Galaxy. Some years after its
spectacular rise to brightness it will have sunk to its former faintness and will
henceforth, almost certainly, remain that way.

The astronomers’ picture of this remarkable phenomenon and a rea-
sonable explanation as to why it occurs, is the result of over a half century
of painstaking observations of novae and a knowledge of atomic energy
processes under pressures and temperatures that until a few years ago did
not exist on Earth.

In fact, novae have been recorded for hundreds of years. In November,

Continued on inside back cover

REBULR

science FicTion

Edited by PETER HAMILTON

Issue Number Thirty-Five

Novelette:

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

C. Tubb

He was only the slave of his human masters, but
by his presence he had saved them all from destruction

Short Stories :

BITTER END

Eric Frank Russell

DARK TALISMAN

James White

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

William F.

Temple

Four-part Serial:

WISDOM OF THE GODS

(Conclusion) Kenneth Bulmer

Special Features:

Look Here

Peter Hamilton

First Breakthrough

Roy Malcolm

102

Something To Read

Kenneth Slater

106

Panorama

Walter Willis

109

Scientifilm Previews

Forrest J. Ackerman

III

Front Cover by Kenneth Barr Back Cover by Arthur Thomson

Black and White Illustrations by John J. Greengrass, Gerard Quinn and Kenneth Barr

NEBULA Science-Fiction is published monthly by PETER HAMILTON, 159
Crownpoint Road, Glasgow, S.E., Scotland- This edition is dated October, 1958.
Editorial Address : i, Kylepark Crescent, Uddingston, Glasgow.

Subscription rates in Great Britain and the British Commonwealth ; 12 issuesr24/- stg. ; in the U.S.A.
and Canada, 12 issues, $4.00. All rates post free. Sole distribution rights for Australia and New Zealand
have been granted to Messrs. Gordon & Gotch (Australasia), Ltd.

Application for second-class mail privileges is pending at New York, N.Y.

No responsibility can be accepted for loss or damage of unsolicited mss. or artwork,
and wWIe these are invited, adequate return postage should always be enclosed.

All characters and events in these stories are entirely fictitious, any resemblance to persons living or dead

is purely coincidental.

Made and printed by Cahill fe? Co, Ltd. in the Republic of Ireland at Parkgate Printing Works ,Kingsbridget

Dublin.

Look here ...

During the past few months the one feature of NEBULA’S progress
which has caused me more gratification than any other is the large increase
in the volume of reader reaction (in the form of letters of comment, ballot
forms, etc.) received following the publication of each issue. It is interesting
to explore the reasons for this trend, particularly when one bears in mind
the present far from encouraging state of the magazine publishing field as a
whole.

The main and most obvious cause for this comparative success on our
part is certainly the recent increase in our circulation in the U.S.A. I, per-
sonally, have always considered the letter sections of American magazines
to be among the most intelligent and stimulating of their kind, and it is a real
pleasure for me to be the recipient of many interesting letters from our
American friends, all of whom seem pleased that NEBULA is now on sale
over there, and anxious to give me their comments and reactions on the type
of stories printed by a British magazine. A remarkable point about science
fiction addicts on the westerh side of the Atlantic is the extreme alacrity
with which they are prepared to subscribe to a magazine which many of
them can only recently have discovered — the NEBULA subscription list now
includes more than 45 per cent. U.S. readers, compared to only 40 per cent,
in Great Britain, with Australia and New Zealand making up much of the
remainder. These figures, coupled with our recent publication of a number
of stories by American and other non-British authors, underlines the unique
international policy and appeal of our magazine.

Another and much less obvious factor which has helped to increase the
number of readers’ letters we have received is an astonishing increase in
female science fiction readers. Referring to our subscription list once more,
I find that 4.5 per cent, of these regular readers are ladies, in startling contrast
to a figure of only .5 per cent, exactly one year ago. While many male
devotees feel that women are rather out of their element in so imaginative a
literary form as science fiction, we all know that wherever the representatives
of that most opposite of sexes turn up, they can be counted upon to express
themselves very volubly.

Finally, of course, there is the long-term effect of our comparatively new
monthly publishing schedule. This gives the reader a regular and frequent
opportunity of buying the magazine, and consequently he has become much
more ready to express his opinions on what he reads in it.

The important thing about all this is that the more people who take
the trouble to write to us, the more accurately will we be able to assess what
a representative cross section of our readers want to see in each month’s
NEBULA. We are here to please you, and if there is any particular type of
story, feature or article you prefer, the logical thing to do is write in and tell
us about it. I will do everything possible to grant all practical requests.

E. C. TUBS

He was only the slave of his human masters, but
by his presence he had saved them all from destruction

Illustrations by John J. Greengrass

We buried Andy beneath a tree which wept beside a river.
It was a gentle place of flower-dotted sward rolHng from the winding
stream towards thick woods lowering on the horizon. The banks of
the river were thick with fern and delicate moss, the green spears of
water plants and the nodding solemnity of rushes. It was a peaceful
place though not a silent one. The waters sang as they coursed
over shining pebbles; their song merging with the sighing rusde of
the branches of the weeping tree, the sibilant whisper of the nodding
rushes. Insects added their sleepy drone to the natural symphony
while butterflies, as brilliant as gems, danced in the scented air as
they beat time to the music. It was a restful, tranquil, contented
place, the whole basking in an eternal summer from the light of a
swollen yellow sun.

It was not on Earth. There were no unspoiled places on Earth

NEBULA

and on none of the parks would we have been permitted to desecrate
the verdant turf. But it was not on Earth and here there were no
property rights, no one to order us away, none to stop what we
intended. So we ravaged the virgin soil and gouged out a hole
six feet deep, six feet long and two feet wide. We spread the rich,
black dirt around it and after we had placed our burden within, we
filled it in again as best we might, patting it smooth and leaving a
raw, ugly oblong sprawling its concave length beneath the branches
of the tree. We filled it in and, awkwardly, waited for someone to
say what we felt should be said.

“ I ,” said Hammond, and paused, sweat gleaming on his

big face, the big, broad face with the deep-graven lines and the grim
set of jaw, the face with the thin, tight mouth and the hard, uncom-
promising eyes. Hammo^nd was a good captain as captains went.
He could handle his crew and he could handle his ship and, accord-
ing to his lights, was a fair and just man. Never before had I seen
him at a disadvantage but now he seemed to have trouble finding
words.

“ I,” he said again, and this time managed to continue. “ I guess
that we all know what we owe to Andy and I like to think that he
knows how we feel.” He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief,
running it over his neck and beneath his damp collar. “ I like to
think that he will be taken care of wherever he may be at this
moment. I hope so.”

It was simple but it was sincere. Hammond didn’t need words
to say what he felt, his actions had already shown that. Starships
do not usually stop off at virgin planets in order to bury their dead.
Crewmen who die are normally dumped into space during transit;
gone quick and forgotten quicker. It had taken much fuel and more
time for Hammond to make this gesture and I respected him for it.
So I said nothing, despite the irony, but instead looked at Qovis
the engineer.

He was embarrassed, a man who did not know how to display
emotion but who hid his feelings behind his gross bulk and a fa9ade
of coarse language.^ He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to
another, glanced briefly to where the shuttle rocket waited to lift us
back into space, then kicked absendy at the mound around which
we stood.

“ He was a great guy,” he said abruptly. And stared at Styman.
“ A damn good guy ! ”

Styman didn’t argue. Styman never argued; Styman always
stated facts and, if you disagreed with him, he would stare at you

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

with a supercilious expression as if you were too ignorant to waste
time trying to convert. He was our navigator, a thin intellectual
with an acid mouth and furtive eyes. His world was a world of facts
and figures and, away from that world, he was out of his depth. He
compensated for this by a sneering belittlement of the things which
normal men hold in regard. But he did not sneer now, if he had
I think that I would have flung myself at his throat, instead he
scowled and spoke the naked truth.

“ We’ll miss Andy,” he said quickly. “ We’ll miss him a lot.”

“You can say that again,” I said thickly, and had to swallow
before I could speak again. “ I guess that he was the finest crew-
man I ever knew.”

My eyes smarted, probably from the effects of the gum-scented
air beneath the weeping tree, but I managed to stare at Bryant and,
if the cynical, world-wise and world-weary doctor felt offended at a
mere galley-captain giving him a silent order he didn’t show it.
He didn’t look at me though. He just let his pouched eyes drift over
the mound, the tree, the river and the flower-dotted sward. His
veined nostrils dilated as he snuffed the clean, sweet air of the place
and, when he spoke, his voice was surprisingly gentle.

NEBULA

“ It’s a nice place,” he said. “ A very nice place. Andy
should be happy here.”

And that was the biggest irony of all.

I do not think that Andy ever knew what happiness was. If
he did then he never experienced it. Once or twice, perhaps, he
may have snatched a brief contentment, but such interludes only
served to throw into greater contrast the grim misery of his daily
round. A man can be miserable and still have time to dream and,
in dreaming, find some happiness, some anticipation, some hope for
the future. Andy had no anticipation, no hope and, if he could
dream, then his dreams were the worst kind of self-torment I know.
A man, incarcerated for life in a dank and isolated cell, can dream
of freedom and what Jie will do with it, but such dreams serve only
to increase his misery. Andy had no hope of freedom, ever, and
nothing he could do with it if he had it. Andy was not a man.
Andy was a male neuter manufactured in a laboratory. Andy was an
android.

You find them all over, the androids. They are of medium
height, hairless, slim bodied and with dark, sad eyes. They never
smile and rarely speak and one looks so much like another that they
could be»identical twins. They are, of course, all springing from
the same seed, all developed in the same environment, aU built in the
same way. When they emerge from their plastic sacs they are as
identical as peas in a pod. Later they gain a slight individuality
according to their treatment, but always one will remind you of
another.

They are the creatures who carry your baggage; who stand,
patiently waiting, for hours at a time while their mistress or master
goes shopping. They sweep the streets, clean the sewers, polish your
shoes and wait table. They do all the unpleasant jobs, the ones no
human wants to do, the ones which no human can economically
perform. They have a number but no one remembers that. Some
have fanciful names but most are known by the natural diminutive of
their generic name. We had one aboard.

He came to us fresh from his sac and learned life in the prison
of a starship. He never left the metal hull, not even when we
touched down at a port of call, but remained on constant watch duty
in the control room, releasing one of us for outside leave. He never
felt the naked sun on his skin, smelt the sweet scent of growing
things, watched a bird in flight or bathed in a stream. He never
joined us in a tavern to drink and stare at women wriggling in

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

seductive dances to the impassioned frenzy of drums. But once,
returning unexpectedly, I found him reading a volume of verse I
had in my galley.

“You’re reading!” The discovery shook me so that I forgot
my original impulse which was to snatch the book from his hands
and slap his face before kicking him from my sanctum as a punish-
ment for interfering with my property.

“ Yes, sir,” he said. He called everyone “ sir ” from the
captain down to the lowest stevedore. I noticed a thin film of sweat
glistening on his face. “ I’m sorry, sir.”

He expected a beating, I knew that. He expected to be kicked
and cursed like a dog which has messed on the mat or chewed the
curtains. He had done wrong and *he knew it and now he waited,
dumbly, for whatever punishment I wished to give. Instead I took
the book from his hands, glancing at what he had been reading.

“ Do you like Oscar Wilde?” I commenced reading before he
could answer.

]Ve were as men who through a fen
Of filthy darkness grope;

We did not dare to breathe a prayer.

Or to give our anguish scope;

Something was dead in each of us.

And what was dead was Hope.

I looked up, feeling as strongly as before the impact of these
grim lines. I looked up and stared directly into Andy’s eyes.
Sweat? Eyes do not sweat, not even the eyes of androids. But
androids do not weep either; only humans do that.

“ You shouldn’t have come in here,” I said. “ You know that
I don’t allow anyone to mess about in my kitchen.”

“ I’m sorry, sir,” he repeated. “ But I was all alone and ”

He paused, his eyes searching my face. “ I didn’t think that I was
doing anything wrong, sir.”

I remained silent, thinking, more shaken than I knew. It wasn’t
the fact that Andy could read which bothered me; he’d had his basic
education before coming to us, it was what he had chosen to read
which was important. It was as if a dog had suddenly commenced
to talk. Its ability wouldn’t make it human but, at the same time,
it would no longer be wholly a dog.

“ Make some coffee,” I ordered sharply for the want of anything
better to say. “ Make it good and strong.”

NEBULA

“ Yes, sir.” He leapt to obey and I sat down at the kitchen
table, the book in my hands, the pages opening of their own accord
to the Ballad of Reading Gaol. Books only dp that when they have
frequently been opened at a special place and, much as I liked Oscar
Wilde, I hadn’t read that particular piece all that much. Andy?
I glanced at him, busy over the stove, then dropped my eyes to the
page and read the passage I had quoted. I read it again and then
again and then once more and, each time I read it, the suspicion in
my mind flickered to a brighter significance.

“ Your coffee, sir.” Andy was suddenly at my side, a steaming
cup in his hand. He startled me, I had been far gone in thought and,
at his words, I jumped, hitting the cup and sending the scalding
coffee over my arm. , Pain dictated my instinctive response; I struck
out, knocking the android to the floor then pointed towards the
door.

“ Get out ! ” I snapped. “ Clumsy fool ! Get out and stay
out ! ”

The blow was nothing new to him, the words even less, he had
collected plenty of both in the past. He cringed and scuttled from
the kitchen and, watching him go, I felt sick inside. No man should
be so servile. No man should ever have allowed himself to be struck
or spoken to hke that without making an attempt to fight back.

But then, of course, Andy wasn’t a man.

The burn wasn’t painful, certainly not painful enough to merit
medical treatment, and certainly not serious enough to seek it three
days after the event had taken place. But the minor injury was an
excuse. I wanted to talk about Andy and I wanted to do it with
someone who should know all about androids and what made them
what they were.

Bryant snorted as he examined the superficial injury. “What’s
the matter, Sam? Getting soft?” He leaned back in his chair, his
pouched eyes sleepy looking. “ That arm’s all right and you know
it.”

“ It hurts. Doctor.” Of all the crew I was the only one who
addressed Bryant by his correct title. To the others he was “ Doc
to Andy he was “ Sir ”.

“ Then slap some butter on it.” The sleepy-looking eyes never
left my face. “ Are you going to talk about it now or leave it until
later?”

“ Talk about what. Doctor?”

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

“ The real reason you came to see me.” He gestured contemp-
tuously towards my arm. “ Fm not a fool, Sam. A man like you
doesn’t worry about a scald like that; not when he’s collected a dozen
worse during the course of his trade.” He tapped my arm. “ How
and when?”

“ Just before we took-off. Andy tipped a cup of coffee over

me.”

“ I see.” Bryant looked thoughtful. “ So that’s how he
collected that swollen jaw. I’d begun to think that Clovis was
falling into bad habits again.” He didn’t enlarge on what he’d just
said but I understood well enough. The engineer was a quick man
with his fists and tongue and the android had served as a convenient
whipping boy. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d left Andy alone.
It seemed that Bryant had been the reason.

“ You like him, don’t you. Doctor?” I blurted. “ Andy, I
mean.”

He shrugged, the pouched eyes cynical.

“ I didn’t mean to hit him like that.” For some reason I felt
that it was important that Bryant should know the truth of the
matter. “ It was just that the pain made mq angry and I struck out
without thinking.”

“ That’s the trouble with the human race,” he said. “ They
never stop to think.” He sat, staring at something invisible on the
wall, or perhaps staring down the misty corridors of memory. He
sat like that for a long time, almost as if he had forgotten my
presence, then he shuddered and pulled open a drawer in his desk.
“ To hell with them!”

From the drawer he produced a bottle and a glass. He filled it,
drank, and then met my stare above the rim. For a moment he
hesitated, then produced a second glass and filled it to the brim.

“To the monkey men,” he toasted, lifdng his replenished glass.
“ May they never stop to think for, if they do, then they will find it
impossible to live with their thoughts.” He drank and, though I did
not wholly understand his meaning, I drank with him. The liquor
had forged a bond between us, a temporary bond I had no doubt, but
I took advantage of it while I could.

“ I’ve been thinking,” I said slowly. “ About Andy and the
rest of them.”

“ Don’t think, Sam,” said Bryant. “ It can be dangerous.”

“ Perhaps.” I stared into my empty glass, wondering just how
to phrase what I wanted to say. Converse about androids to most

NEBULA

people and they will regard you as soft or queer. “Just how
different are they, Doctor? From us, I mean?”

“ They have no souls,” he said. “ They are not born of woman
and so they have no souls.”

“Is that all?” The answer didn’t satisfy me. Bryant, I knew,
was being cynical.

“ What more do you want?” He reached for the botde and
helped himself, slopping a little of the spirit onto his desk. I
suddenly realised that he was more than a little drunlr. “ Do you
want an analogy? Take a normal baby, depilate him, castrate him,
fix his navel with plastic surgery and, when he reaches maturity,
you’ll have an android. Does that satisfy you?”

“ Is it true?” * .

“ Medically speaWng, yes.” He wiped his mouth on the back of
his hand. “Medically speaking there is no basic difference between
an android and a human. I have already given you the spiritual
difference.”

“ They have no souls.” I shrugged, to me that was small
difference. Few of the men I have met could have laid claim to a
soul and fewer still wanted to. But I did not argue the point.
Bryant was not an authority on spiritual matters but he could
answer something which had been troubling me. “ Why are they
gelded?”

“Gelded?” He frowned, then looked at me strangely. “That’s
an odd word for a cook to use. Where did you pick it up?”

“ From books.” I didn’t want to go into the matter. Bryant
didn’t seem to want to leave it alone.

“ Of course. I’d forgotten, you read a lot, don’t you.”

“ Why not? It helps to pass the time.”

“ So does card playing, conversation, the making of lace or the
playing of chess,” He glanced at me, an odd expression in his eyes.
“ But human company isn’t good enough for you. You are lonely
and so you read. You feel unwanted, insecure and so you escape
into the fantasy world of books.” He shook his head at me.
“Reading can be a dangerous pursuit, Sam. Men have ideas and
they write them down so that other men can absorb them. Some
men even act upon them. Revolutions have been caused that way.”

“ I’m no rebel,” I said shortiy.

“ No?” Bryant raised his eyebrows a trifle. “ Then w’ny the
interest in the android?”

“Just curiosity.” I hesitated, knowing that my answer wasn’t

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

good enough, then decided to tell the truth. “ I caught Andy
reading one of my books. It — upset me a little.”

“ You see?” Bryant was more cynical than ever. “I told you
reading was a dangerous pursuit.” He shrugged. “ If you weren’t
a bookworm then Andy couldn’t have borrowed your property and
you wouldn’t have tried to break his jaw.”

“ I didn’t hit him because of that. It was the pain from the
spilled coffee.”

Bryant didn’t answer. He just sat at his desk, his pouched eyes
staring at me as if I were a specimen beneath his microscope, his
hand resting lightly on his bottle as if he were waiting for me to go
so that he could help himself to another drink. But there was still
something I wanted to know. »

“ Why are they gelded, the androids, I mean?”

“ They aren’t,” he said promptly. “ You’ve got hold of the
wrong word. Gelding is what they do to horses. Castration is the
medical term or, no, that is what is done to men.” He frowned as if
considering the problem. “ Neutering is what is done to androids.
Neutering. But it means the same thing in the end.”

“ But why Why do they do it?”

And then, suddenly, I had the answer. I knew why all androids
were neuter; they just had to be that way. Jealousy was part of it;
the jealousy of old men for young, handsome androids, the jealousy
of those without virihty towards those who are virile. But the
main reason was superiority. A man, no matter how poverty-striken
or ugly, no matter how low bis circumstances, could not but help
feeling superior to an android. It was the inbred superiority of a
man towards a eunuch; a superiority which had all the tremendous
force of race survival behind it. And the same reason also accounted
for the fact that the androids were depilated; hair is also a masculine
symbol.

But why we had androids at all was something I still had to
learn.

It is an odd thing that it is possible to see something almost
every day of your hfe and yet never really see it at all. Then,
because of some accident, or because it is pointed out to you, your
viewpoint changes just that litde and you wonder how you could
have been so blind for so long.

With me Andy was like that. I’d known him ever since he
joined the ship and had used him more than most. A cook has a
lot of work to do and he’s usually working long after the others have

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finished. It was natural for me to pass a lot of that work on to the
android; all the unpleasant work attendant upon the preparation and
clearing away of meals. And yet not once in all that time did I ever
think of him as other dian a machine.

The thought that he could ever get tired had never occurred to
me. I had ordered him to clean up and wash the kitchen, had left
him plenty of work to do while I slept and then, when I had woken,
kept him hard at it until some other member of the crew had
demanded his services. And if he had faltered or had been slow I
had cursed him, even struck him and never felt the slightest regret
for having done so. Why should I? Can a machine feel fatigue or
pain? But can a machine read poetry?

Andy had done that. But what really served to change my
viewpoint v;asn’t so much the fact -that he had been reading poetry
but the nagging suspicion that he had not only read it but under-
stood it. It could not have been accident that he had chosen that
particular poem; the way the book had opened in my hands proved
that he had read that verse often, how often I could only guess.
But from that moment I ceased to regard him as a machine and began
to think of him as an individual. And after I had spoken to Bryant
I even began to think of him as a man.

Injustice does not normally trouble me; there is too much
injustice in the universe, so much that it is accepted as a normal part
of the scheme of things. Brutality has lost its power to tighten my
stomach and send anger through my veins, I have seen much
brutality and, by usage, have managed to isolate myself from it.
The universe is as it is and the universe is too big a place for any
one man to alter. And there are always books and books can be gentle
things.

So, despite my changed viewpoint, I did not attempt to
champion Andy or to protect him from his environment. True, I
did ease off on his kitchen duties and forced myself to remember
that perhaps he needed sleep as much as I, but aside from that I was
content to study him as if he were a problem rather than a thing
of hurtable flesh and blood. And, one shift, I discovered the reason
why androids existed at all.

It was a httle thing which did it, but how many discoveries
have been caused through trifles? We had just eaten and Andy, as
soft-footed as ever, had cleared the table so that we could sit in
comfort, smoking and talking, relaxing as men must if they are to
gain benefit from their food. Hammond wasn’t with us, he always
ate alone in the control room, but Qovis was there and Styman and

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

Bryant, each sitting at his own side of the table with myself filling in
the square.

The talk had drifted, I forget about what, but suddenly some-
thing caught my attention.

“ Captain’s Dog?” I looked at Clovis. “ Why did you call him
that?”

“ Freeman?” Clovis shrugged. “ Well, that’s what he was.
A Captain’s Dog.” He chuckled. “ Or he was until he jumped ship
one touchdown and headed for the hills. I guess he figured that any
sort of a life was better than the one he had.” He chuckled louder
at my expression. “ Don’t you know what a Captain’s Dog is?”

“ No.” I was curt, I had the feeling that Clovis was being
funny at my expense. He laughed eyen louder as he read what I
was thinking and jerked a thumb towards Styman.

“ He’ll tell you,” he wheezed. “ Tell him, Styman, about old
Captain Delmayer and his dog.”

St5mian frowned, annoyed at being brought into the conversa-
tion but he did as Clovis had aslced.

“ Captain Delmayer was one of the old timers,” he said. “ I
never met him myself, he was around long before my time, but he
had a terrible temper, so bad that he’d had more than one incipient
mutiny on his hands. You see, he used to flare up and when he did
he’d hit out at the first man around.”

“ And he was a big man,” chuckled Clovis, taking over. “ His
crew half-loved, half-hated his guts, but he could be generous and
he was a fine captain in other ways so they decided to do something
about his temper. Anyway, to cut it short, they clubbed together
and bought him a plastic dog. It was a big thing, so life like that
you’d swear it was real, and they put it in the control room.”

“Why?” I was interested.

“ Some head doctor told them to do it, so they did. And it
worked fine! Whenever Delmayer blew his top he’d take a running
kick at the dog and send it from one side of the room to the other.
That eased his temper and kept the crew happy.” Clovis chuckled
again. “ It had to be a plastic dog, of course, old Delmayer was too
fond of animals to hurt a real one — even if he could have found one
able to stand more than one kick.” He stared at my face. “ Some-
thing wrong?”

“ No,” I lied. “ Why did you call that man. Freeman I think
you called him, a Captain’s Dog?”

“ Why?” Clovis shrugged. “ The name just stuck, I guess.
Anyone who didn’t have the guts to stand up for himself used to be

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known as a Captain’s Dog.” He shrugged again. “ As far as I know
they still are.”

He was wrong. Now they had a new name. And now I knew
what that name was.

Once, while on a brief touchdown at one of the more civilised
planets, an elderly woman stood at the exit of the landing field and
passed out little slips of paper to all who passed. I don’t suppose
that more than one in a dozen even glanced at the slips and of that
number only a tenth bothered to read what was written on them. In
fact they were invitations to attend a meeting of the Purist League,
a body of idealists who wanted to abolish the manufacture of
androids. I had nothing better to do and so I went to the meeting.

The Purists claimed, and- proved by graphs and figures, that
there was no need for androids at all. Humans could breed as fast as
desired and at a lower overall cost per unit than any android ever
made. With mechanisation the way it is, labour was no problem and
so, demanded the Purists, why contaminate the human race with
these artificial constructions of the scientists? Leaving aside the
fact that androids can’t contaminate the human race any more than
robots can, they had a good argument. It sounded logical and it
even made sense. But they had forgotten the basic need of Mankind.

Bryant dropped into the galley one shift a Uttle while after I had
learned about the Captain’s Dog. He sat down and toyed with the
cup of coffee I gave him, staring about the kitchen and the row of
books I keep above the stove. He nodded towards them.

“ Still reading?”

“ Of course.” Here, in my own domain, I felt more at ease
than I had when first I had questioned him about Andy.

“ Andy? Is he reading too?”

“ Yes.” I felt myself becoming embarrassed and was angry at
myself for it. “ I let him borrow a book from time to time. Why
not? Where’s the harm?”

“ In reading? No harm at all. It’s in what he might read that the
danger lies.” Bryant, to my surprise, was very serious. “ Such
things as The Declaration of Independence. You know it? Or
Genesis, or some of the philosophers. I warned you of the dangerous
ideas men can obtain from books, remember?”

“ Is Andy a man?” If I had hoped to shock him into a damaging
admission I was to be disappointed.

“ You know what Andy is,” he said levelly. “ I was watching
your face when Clovis told you.” He leaned forward, his veined

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

nose and pouched eyes giving him a peculiar, almost inhuman
expression. “ Well?”

“ I know,” I admitted, and suddenly felt my stomach tightening
as it had once before when I’d seen a wrongdoer being whipped to
death for some minor crime. “ But why? why?”

“ Androids are necessary,” said Bryant heavily. “ Androids,
in one form or another, have always been necessary.” He halted my
protest with a gesture of his hand. “ I know what you are going
to say, that we’ve never had androids before, but stop and think
about it for a moment. What makes an android a thing apart?
Isn’t it the fact that he isn’t really human? And what would you
call a man of another race? Another colour? If you had clear
ideas of what constituted a human, and you were human, then any-
thing different from yourself couldn’t be human, could it? And the
same applies to beliefs, to religions and ideals. If others are dif-
ferent, then it doesn’t really matter what you do to them. Because
they aren’t really human and the rules governing human conduct
do not apply. And that isn’t all.”

I didn’t need him to tell me the rest. I didn’t need him to
point out that every civiUsation has its roots in a slave culture of

1.6

NEBULA

one form or another and that so strong a heritage cannot be denied.
And I knew that men were sadistic and that they couldn’t help
being that way even when paying lip-service to an ideal. Logic can
prove that all men are created equal but no logic in the universe
can ever convince a man that every other man is as good as he is.

And it is right that this should be so for men are not equal, no

matter how they may have been born. Emotion and instinct can,
quite often, be more correct than cold logic.

“ We need a Captain’s Dog,” said Bryant. “ All of us.

Something or someone to hit when we are hurt, to beat when we

are beaten, to master when we have been mastered. We have to
prove, to ourselves at least, that we are better than someone else,
or something else.” ,

“ In this day -and age?” I didn’t elaborate the point but my
eyes drifted over the metal of the ship in which we sat.

“ In any day and age,” said Bryant. “ Men haven’t progressed,
Sam, not as we sometimes like to think we have. We have techno-
logical toys and we have managed to develop a conscience, but that’s
about all. Deep down inside we are still the primitive and, if we
can still the pangs of conscience, we can be as hard and as cruel as
any insane animal.”

He was right of course. I knew, who better? that civilisation
has progressed beneath a system which has accustomed people to
being kicked by those above. Civilisation had been a ladder which
could only be climbed by a ruthless disregard for anything and any-
one but self and, again, it was right that this should be so for, with-
out such competition, Man could never have progressed beyond the
cave. And Man is what he is; alter his way of life, his mental,
instinctive outlook on life and he will no longer be Man.

So we have our system and our system works and, if such a
system makes life a living hell for those on the bottom rung of the
ladder, then that is the price we must pay. But we have a con-
science too, and a growing awareness of the humanity of Man, and
slavery is no longer to be tolerated. So we compromised. Add
another rung to the ladder and so hft all humans to a point where
any and everyone has something to kick.

Give all humanity an artificial Captain’s Dog.

Things were not the same after my talk with Bryant. Not the
same, that is, for me, though the others continued just as before,
using Andy as a convenient mechanism, using him to vent their
spite and their frustration at each other. A starship is a boring place
with htde to do for long periods and tiny feuds boiled between the

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

crew. Styman had his knuckles rapped by Hammond, he was a
hundredth of a degree off course, and kicked Andy viciously on his
way to the dining-room, kicking Hammond in proxy and so easing
his soul. He looked startled as I grabbed his arm.

“ Did you have to do that?”

“ Do what?” He was genuinely baffled. “ What the hell are
you talking about?”

“ Did you have to kick Andy like that?”

“ That’s my business.” He looked down at my hand where
it gripped his arm. “ Get your hand off my arm, Sam. I don’t
like to be handled.”

I hesitated, trying to control the anger which had tightened my
stomach, knowing that I had, no real justification for such anger.
How I felt towards Andy was my business. It was something per-
sonal and I could not expect others to feel the same way. I released
Styman’s arm and stepped towards the kitchen.

“Just learn to control yourself a little,” I warned. I could
not help but make the warning. “ Andy’s no dog to be kicked
around.” I entered the kitchen and had crossed to the stove when
I became aware that Styman had followed me.

“ Just what did you mean by that, Sam?” His thin mouth was
pinched together, a slit in the weak contours of his face.

“ What I said.” His eyes warned me, I had seen such eyes
before, and I knew that Styman was boiling with rage. He had
been in a temper when he’d left Hammond; he had tried to vent
it by kicking Andy and I had interfered. Now his rage had trans-
ferred itself to me.

“ Andy’s a thing,” he said deliberately. “ A collection of
chemicals brewed together in a vat. He isn’t human and you know
it. Why the sudden interest?”

“ That’s my business.” I took a deep breath. “ Just leave
him alone.”

“Why?”

“ Never mind why. You just do as I say.”

My control was slipping and I knew it. Championing the weak
is, I know, a waste of time. The strong despise you for it and
tlte weak are rarely grateful but, waste of time or not, this was some-
thing which I had to do. It had become a personal issue between
me and Styman and, deep inside me, I knew the reason why. For
a long time now I had thought of Andy as a man, not as a thing, and
inevitably, I had ceased to ilhreat him. I liked Andy; I did not likCj

NEBULA

Styman, and the android had become merely an excuse to vent my
own dislike.

And Styman did not like me.

“ You should see Bryant,” he said coldly. “ I believe that
there is a word for those afflicted in a certain, peculiar way.”

“ I don’t want any broken-down calculator to tell me what to
do,” I said, and from the way his thin mouth tightened I knew that
I was scratching at his vulnerable point. “ Go back to your books,
litde man, and leave real things to those who can understand them.”

“ I can understand one thing well enough,” he said coldly. He
glanced around the kitchen, his nostrils flaring as if he smelt a bad
odour. “ I can understand dirt. This place stinks of androids.”

We all have our weaknesses anti it was his turn to score. We
were being childish, of course, in what we were saying to each
other, but since when have men in anger been anything else?

“ If you have any complaints,” I said, “ take them to Hammond.
In the meantime get out of my kitchen and stay out.”

“ rU go in my own good time.” Styman glanced around again,
wanting to hurt me but not knowing quite how to do it. He sneered
as he saw my books. “ You and that thing make quite a cosy pair,
don’t you? Locked up in here at all hours reading that trash and
staring into each other’s eyes.” He sneered again. “ No wonder
you don’t want to see your darling get hurt.”

I am fat and bald and not so young as I was, and violence is
something I do not like. But there are some things I will not stand,
not even from the Captain himself, and Styman had gone too far.
He knew it. I saw his eyes dilate and his face go slack with fear as
I stepped towards him and he cringed, his hands thrusting at me,
palms first like the hands of a woman.

“No!” he whispered. “Please God, no!”

“Are you crazy?” It was Bryant, thrusting himself between
us like a wall of flesh, his hand gripping my right wrist. “ Drop
it, you fool ! Drop it ! ”

I halted, staring down, my breath sobbing in my throat and,
for the first time, realised that I had snatched up the big knife I use
for kitchen work. Had Bryant not interfered I would have plunged
it into Styman’s stomach and not even been aware of what I was
doing.

“ He would have killed me,” whimpered the navigator. “ I
could see it in his eyes. He would have killed me.”

And then something happened which made ail that had gone
before of no importance whatsoever.

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG

Starships are big things; they have to be in order that their
pay-load capacity can justify the expense of operation but, big as
they are, they have their Achilles Heel. Every part of a starship
can be maintained and repaired by its crew except one and that one
part depends on remote control and automatic manipulation. An
atomic pile is something no one has yet learned to live with;
not unless there is thick shielding between it and its operator, and
rarely, fortunately rarely, does something go wrong. But when it
does, then death is immediate.

The sound of the alarm siren killed our futile quarrel as though
it had never been. Clovis, his face white and taut, came running
towards us, Hammond close behind. They didn’t need to say any-
thing; the siren was plain enough, but Clovis explained anyway.

“ The automatics have gone out of kilter,” he wheezed. “ The
dampening rods are out and the Rontgen count is rising,”

“How fast?” Bryant was concerned about the medical aspects.

“ Too fast. We’ve maybe ten minutes, maybe less.” Clovis
wiped sweat from his forehead, forgetting even to curse in the
emergency.

“ What went v/rong?” Styman was more practical. Hammond
answered him as he joined us.

“ From what I can discover one of the brace-rods has snapped,
probably because of metal fatigue. In falling it threw out the
dampers and jammed them open against the remote controls.” He
passed a hand over his face, closing his eyes for a moment as if the
light hurt them. “ A broken rod,” he said. “ A simple thing like
that.”

“ We can fix it,” said Clovis. “ But someone will have to go
in there to do it.” And then he fell silent while we each watched
the others.

I do not know how many books I have read, thousands probably,
and I am fully aware of the way men are supposed to act when faced
with a situation such as ours. In books the hero always volunteers
to save the lives of the rest. In books — but not in real life.

In real life existence is too sweet, the mere act of breathing too
important for heroics. Old as I am, useless though I may be, yet
life is still sweet. There are books still to read, poetry still to relish,
a thousand light years still to traverse and, if life is important to me
it is no less important to others. And so we stood there, watching
each other, while time seemed to have slowed so that each heart-
beat became a separate, discernible function of our bodies.

NEBULA

“ We could draw straws,” suggested Qovis. “ Short man
goes in.”

“ No,” said Hammond. “ We can’t do that.” He passed his
hand over his face again, and again closed his eyes and this time I
knew why he made the gesture. For there could be no argument
as to who had to venture close to the pile and die so that others
might live. Failing a volunteer, the safety of the ship was the Cap-
tain’s responsibility. Hammond was going to die, and soon, and
he knew it. And his gesture was his way of saying goodbye to the
present. And though we grieved for him, none of us ,was willing to
take his place. None of us, that is, with one exception.

“ I will go,” said Andy, and it showed his state of mind that
not only did he volunteer to speak dnbidden, but omitted any form
of title. “ Tell me what to do and I will do it.”

He stood beside me and a little behind; until he spoke none
of us had suspected his presence. He had joined us as soft-footed as
ever and now he stood, not smiling, not frowning, as emotionless as
usual, waiting for our reply to his amazing offer. I do not know
what he expected our' reaction to be, I could not even guess, but one
thing is certain, he did not expect no reaction at all.

“ I, won’t wear a suit,” said Hammond, ignoring the android.
“ The protection isn’t enough and it will slow me down. I’ll dive
in, shift the broken rod and get out again as fast as I can. Bryant,
you’ll stand by to do what you can. Styman, you’ll be in command
until a new Captain can be appointed.” He hesitated. “ We have
a little time before the danger peak is reached. There are one or

two matters I wish to attend to before ” He took a deep breath,

not finishing the sentence. “ I w'ill be back in good time.” He
turned and walked back towards the control room, walking proudly
as became a man.

“ I don’t understand, sir.” Andy plucked at my arm. “ I said
that I would go; vAy doesn’t he let me?”

I stared at him as he stood beside me, so insignificant that,
in a moment of crisis, no one had been aware of his presence, and
I knew that I could never make him understand. How can you tell
a dog a dog’s duties? How can you explain to something which
has always been on the bottom rung that those on the top have more
than just the best things in the universe? They have authority and
they have responsibility, but they also have pride. And when it
comes to the point a man does not expect a dog to volunteer to do
his master’s duty.

THE CAPTAIN’S DOG 21

“ He will die in there, won’t he, sir?” Andy nodded towards the
engine room.

“ Yes.”

“ He will cease to be,” he murmured. “ All this,” and his eyes
took in the entire vessel and his existence aboard it, “ all this will
cease to be. It will be ended, over, finished for ever. Does he
want that?”

“ No,” I said. “ But unless he does it we will all die.” I fore-
stalled his next question. “ And he will never permit you to take
his place. Never.”

“ To die,” he murmured. “ To sleep, no more ” And

then he was gone, running away from me down the corridor towards
the sealed door of the engine room, racing past Clovis and Bryant
and the startled face of Styman, running with a patter of feet while
the words of the unhappy Dane echoed in my ears.

I tried to catch him; would have done had not Bryant caught
my arm and dragged me back. Even then I think I would have
reached him in time had not the doctor slapped my face and called
to the others to restrain me. They held me tight between them so
that I could do nothing but watch and. curse helplessly while Andy
undogged the external door and ran inside to his death.

“ The fool ! ” I fought to free my arms so that they had trouble
in keeping on their feet. “ He’ll die in there ! Die ! ”

“ Is that bad?” Bryant rested his fingers on my throat.
“ Relax now, Sam or I’ll squeeze your carotids and black you out.”

“ But ”

“ But nothing.” He nodded to the others and they eased their
grasp on my arms. “You and your books! I warned you about
letting Andy read but you wouldn’t listen. Did you think that you
were being kind? Did you think that by showing him all the things
that he missed, that he could never enjoy, that you were doing him
a favour?” The disgust in his voice startled me so that I forgot to
struggle and stood limp, shocked by the sudden realisation of the
truth that was being shown to me.

“ Dying is the kindest thing that could happen to him,” said
Bryant heavily. “ Why else do you think I held you back?” And
he stepped away from me as the others released my arms.

And so we stood, waiting, Hammond too, when he finally
joined us ready for death and finding instead a hope of life. We
waited while a man-made thing passed through the shielding into
the invisible flame of the atomic pile. Waited while our nerves
crawled and our hearts slowed and time hung in an eternity of

NEBULA

emptiness. Waited until Andy finally emerged into sight again,
falling into the corridor with the last of his strength, his eyes fixed on
mine until the last. And then we had to wait some more while the
radiation counters eased from the red, waiting until his body cooled
so that we could enclose him in a plastic bag without fear of the
invisible death he carried.

And, while we waited, who knew what thoughts passed through
the others’ minds? Regret at unkindness done and now irredeem-
able? Guilt at unthinking brutality? Sorrow at treatment,
undeserved and yet received in fuU measure from the hands of those
who boast that they are made in the image of their Creator?

Whatever we thought we tried to make up for all that had
been done in the end. And so, we halted at a virgin planet and
buried Andy beneath 'a tree which wept beside a river in a gentle
place of flower-dotted sward and drifting butterflies. More than
that we could not do, for the highest honour men can pay is to bury
a stranger as one of their own. And it is a comfort to know that,
at the last, we regarded Andy as a man.

Even though it was far too late by dien to do him any good.

E. C. TUBB

Waiting for You...

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both British and American Authors awaits you every
month in NEBULA.

Make sure that you won’t be unlucky enough to miss
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ERIC FRANK RUSSELL

iitter

Two had gone to Mars and only one returned — with
a story too horrible for human ears to hear

Illustration by Gerard Quinn

The ship dropped out of the sky with no noise other than that
of its braking blasts. It was not easy to see because from behind it
came the glare of a brilliant sun. Describing a shallow angle, it
neared the surface and let go a dozen bangs from its nose. Then
its underbelly skids struck dirt, it slid forward in a cloud of dust
and came to a stop.

An expert eye could have seen at a glance that this was no
ordinary moon-rocket such as flamed between Earth and her satellite
five times a week. It was longer, thinner, racier. Close inspection
would have revealed it more worn, battered and neglected than any
moon-rocket was permitted to be.

Originally it had been golden but now most of its plating was
scraped away in fine, longitudinal lines. Tiny missiles of great hard-
ness and immense velocity had scored the armour from end to end.

NEBULA

In seventeen places they had pierced it like needles going through the
rind of a cheese. Seventeen tiny air-leaks had been plugged with a
special gun firing bullets of semi-molten alloy.

The ship had the pitiful air of something whacked almost to
death, like a maltreated horse. It lay worn and exhausted on the
desert sand, its tubes cooling, its casing showing a few thin hairlines
of gold as reminders of departed glory.

Vaguely discernible near the tail were coppery traces of the
vessel’s identification number: Ml. It was a number once to be
conjured with. A number to fill the world’s television screens and
thrill the minds of millions. Newspapers still nursed headlines in
four-inch caps featuring that identification, holding them in readiness
for the great day.

Mi comes back.

TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF Mi.

Mi lands today.

They’d not had the opportunity to use them. Mi was out
of time and place. The proper time lay many months back; the
proper place was Luna City spaceport whence it had departed. Not
here, lying in the desert like a corpse escaped from its grave. Not
here with none to witness save the lizards and Gila monsters, the
scrubvi/ood, cacti and tortured Joshua trees.

The man who came out of the airlock was no better preserved
than his ship. Gaunt, with hollow cheeks and protruding cheek-
bones, skinny arms and legs, sunken eyes filled with the luminous
shine of the feverish. Yet he was active enough. He could get
around fine providing it was at his own pace. That pace had three
speeds: leisurely, slow and dead-slow.

James Vail, thirty-three, test pilot first class. Thirty-three? He
brushed thin fingers through long, tangled hair, knew that he felt like
seventy and probably looked it. So much the better, so much the
better. The sharp-eyed and inquisitive would pass him by, fooled
by his apparent years. Despite their formidable resources the
powers-that-be would find it hard to trace a man who had aged
enough to resemble his own father.

He left the ship without a qualm, without regret, without so
much as a backward glance. The abandonment meant nothing to
him because so far as the vessel and its contents were concerned
his conscience was clear. World scientists would find precisely what
they wanted within that scarred cylinder. All arranged in readiness
for them: the samples, records, photographs, meterings, the cogent
data. He’d been meticulous about that. He had followed the line

BrXTER END

of duty to the last, the very last. There was nothing missing — save
the crew.

A road ran seven miles to the north. He had landed the ship
strategically, as near as he dared but safely concealed behind a low
ridge. Now he set forth to reach the road, scuffling the sand like
a stumblebum, resting eight times on the way. One mile at a stretch
was the most he could manage. Once upon a time he could have
run the entire seven miles and then done a tap-dance. He’d been
lots fitter and fresher then, with more weight, more muscle, more
stamina.

Traffic was sparse and the wait for a lift likely to be prolonged.
That, too, could be regarded as advantageous in that it reduced the
chance of some passing motorist' having noticed the ship swooping
to ground in the south.

He sat on a boulder, hands deep in pockets, and bided his
time. If he had learned one thing these last couple of years it was
how to wait in fatalistic patience when nothing whatever could b»
done to hasten events. A gaudy coral snake squirmed from the shadow
behind his boulder and glided into the desert to escape his presence.
He stared with blank expectancy up the road and remained unaware
of the snake’s existence.

In due time a big green sedan showed up, ignored his thumb,
roared past with a rush of wind and a scatter of hot grit. Without
resentment he resumed his seat on the boulder. In the next couple
of hours eight cars and a creaking feed-wagon went by, taking no
notice of his begging gestures. Eventually a huge red truck picked
him up.

“ Where’re you going?” asked the driver, putting it into gear
and letting it lumber forward.

James Vail settled himself comfortably in the cab, said, “ It
doesn’t matter much — any place where I can catch a train.”

The driver glanced at his passenger’s hands, noted protruding
blue veins and swollen knuckles. Firming his lips, he gazed silently
through the windscreen. After a while he spoke again.

“ Down on your luck, chum?”

“ Not really. I’ve been sick.”

“ You look it. You’re little better than a skeleton.”

Vail smiled wryly. “ Some folk look worse than they are.”

“ Well, how did you come to be stranded out here in the wilds?”

That was an awkward one. He thought it over, knowing that
his mind was working with unaccustomed slowness.

“ Another fellow gave me a ride for as far as he was going.

NEBULA

He dropped me six or seven miles back. I’ve been walking from
that point. Nobody else would stop for me. Probably they were
afraid of finding themselves stuck with some whining, cadging
wastrel.”

“ That can happen,” agreed the driver. “ I’ve a pretty effective
way of coping with such characters.”

He did not offer the details of his technique. Evidently he’d
mentioned it only as a warning. He was a big, powerful man, red-
faced and tough but amiable. He was the type who’d beat a
threatening tramp unconscious — and then give his dinner to a
hungry cat.

“ A long-distance truck driver can pick up trouble any time of
the day or night,” the driver coqfided. “A hundred miles back I
passed a painted, dressed-up dame looking for a lift. She waved-
like mad at me. Aha, I said to myself, and kept going. I’ve been
on this run before, see, and ”

He continued his reminiscences for an hour while Vail lolled’
by his side and filled occasional pauses with monosyllabic assurances
that he was listening. The truck trundled into a small town. Vail
sat erect studying its shops. His tongue licked across pale, thin
lips.

“ This place will do. You can drop me here.” The truck
stopped and Vail got out. “ Thanks for the ride.”

“ Think nothing of it.” The driver waved a friendly hand,
moved away.

Vail stood on the pavement and watched the crimson bulk
roll from sight. Just as well not to stay with that truck too long,
he thought. A trail is harder to follow when breaks are frequent
and erratic. In due time his own trail would be picked up and
every effort made to trace it through step by step to his ultimate
hiding-place. Nothing was surer than that.

They would find the ship later today or perhaps tomorrow or even
the day after. In these modern times air-traffic was heavy
enough to ensure that some observant pilot would notice tire
grounded rocket-ship and report it. Police would go and take a
look at it, recognise it, call in the scientists. They’d open it, search
it from end to end, become excited by the presence of all they’d
sought but alarmed by the absence of people.

From that moment the hunt would be on. Police spotter-
planes and helicopters scouring the desert. Patrol-cars tearing along
the roads. Telephone and radio calls widening the general area of
alermess. Vehicles halted at road-blocks and the drivers questioned.

BITTER END

“ Did you go past that point? At what time? Did you notice
anything unusual? Did you see a couple of fellows hanging around?”

Sooner or later a patrol-car or police motor-cyclist would stop
a big red truck.

“ You did, eh? At about ten-thirty? You gave one man a
lift? What was he like? Where did he say he was going? Where
did you put him down?”

A phone-call back to this town. Then the local police out in
full strength trying to pick up the new lead.

Yes, they’d be looking for him all right, puzzled over his
importance with no criminal charge entered against him. But they
would obey the orders of high authority, wanting him badly, moving
fast and far, seeking him as assiduously as they’d hunt down a
multiple murderer.

Well, they weren’t going to find him.

He entered a cheap restaurant down a side-street. In here of
all places he had to control himself, behaving casually enough to
draw no undue attention. Finding a vacant table, he sat at it, con-
sulted the menu with artificial boredom. It was a hell of an effort.

A blonde and blowsy waitress came, flicked invisible crumbs
from the table, awaited his order. Her eyes softened as she studied
him and found him a distinct change from the daily horde of fat
and sweaty guzzlers. He was shy and skinny and the difference
appealed to her maternal in>:tincts.

“ Ham and eggs,” he said, unaware of her scrutiny.

She weighed him up again, asked, “ Double eggs?”

Biting back the response he wanted to make he forced himself
to say, “ No, thanks. I’ll have pie to follow.”

It took a few minutes, long, slow, crawling minutes. He waited
in patience, closing his eyes from time to time, compelling his mind
to disregard sizzling sounds and appetising odours issuing from the
kitchen.

The load she brought made him suspect that she had taken
matters into her own hands. It included_double eggs. Perhaps she
had made an honest mistake, having other things on her mind. And
perhaps she hadn’t. The latter possibility alarmed him a little. If
this was no mistake, it meant that she had got the measure of him
and therefore would be certain to remember him a day, a week or
even a month hence.

Expert trackers follow the trail by questioning numberless
people who have reason to remember the seemingly ordinary.

NEBULA

He must eat and get out of here with the minimum of delay.
Yet he could not show indecent haste. So he picked up his knife
and fork, shuddered slightly as he felt them in his fingers. Then
with tormenting slowness he got through the plateful, savouring
every morsel and, pretending not to notice the waitress watching him
from the far end.

The moment he finished she was back at his table removing
the plate and eyeing him inquiringly.

“ No pie,” he said. “ You gave me too much. Really I couldn’t
eat any more. Just a coffee, please.”

Momentary puzzlement showed in her features. Somewhere
her calculations had gone wrong. It shows you can’t judge folk by
appearances, she decided. The longer one lives the more one
learns. ^ ‘

Vail drank his coffee in easy sips, paid and went out. He did
not turn to see whether her gaze was upon him as he departed.
Behave normally at all times, insisted his mind. Behave normally.

With the same unhurried air he strolled along the street, crossed
the main road, found another modest eating place half a mile from
the first. He went inside, had two large hunks of pie and another
coffee.

A-a-ah! that was better. The next call gained him a packet of
cigarettes. He lit up and inhaled in the manner of one tasting the
joys of paradise. Near the shop a long-distance bus pulled into a
stop and an old lady with luggage struggled aboard. Vail put on a
sudden sprint of which he’d have been quite incapable a short time
before. Clambering in, he found a seat near the front. Steadily the
bus droned out of town.

Trail-break number two.

At the end of three weeks he had settled himself seventeen
hundred miles from rocket-ship Mi. Sheer distance provided a
margin of safety no matter how temporary. He had a room in a
dilapidated but adequate boarding-house, a job in a factory. Trainee
welder, they called him. From test pilot to trainee welder. He’d
come down like a rocket.

Doubtless he could find employment far better than that, some-
thing more suited to his capabilities, if he looked around long
enough. But the two hundred dollars with which he had landed had
slowly and surely dribbled away. Anything would do to keep him
going pending appearance of other and better opportunities.

His looks had changed considerably during these three weeks
and he now bore reasonably close resemblance to the picture on his

BITTER END

pilot licence. Cheeks had filled out, arms and legs thickened, hair
grown stronger and darker. His name also had changed. On the
factory’s filing system he was indexed as Harry Reber, forty-two,
single and unattached. ■ /

Security of a job did not provide mental ease. He could not
escape consciousness of the falsity of his position. Fellow workers
emphasised it almost every hour of every day. They would bawl,

“ Harry!” and frequently he would fail to respond and they would
notice the failure. With the swift appreciation of men who toil with
their hands, they recognised him as one several cuts above his present
station. They made mental note of the fact that none of his con-
versations ever revealed a worthwhile thing about himself. There
was a mystery about him sometimes discussed in desultory manner
when he wasn’t around. Political left-wingers theorised that he was
a stool-pigeon for the bosses. The lurid minded suspected a criminal
record.

All of this could have been avoided and the square peg neatly
fitted into a square hole by seeking a post with the moon-boats.
Pilots always were wanted there, especially top-graders. The hunters
knew that too. They’d be expecting just such a move, waiting for
it, watching for it, and ready with a countermove of their own.

“ James Vail, I am a government intelligent agent. It is my
duty to ”

Hah! He would never give them the chance. Duty they’d call
it to drag him where he did not want to go. What did they really
know of duty? He had done his own duty according to his lights
as best he could in terrible circumstances. Let that be enough and
more than enough. Let him linger in peace and live in obscurity
without being crucified for the sake of other and lesser duties.

Every morning and evening when going to or from work he
bought the latest paper, scanned the headlines. Then at the first
opportunity he’d go right through it page by page, column by
column. He purchased one this evening, took it to his room and
studied it from front to back.

Nothing about Mi. Not a solitary word. Yet they must have
found it hy now. And they must want the crew. Nevertheless
nothing had been said on the radio or the video and nothing had
been issued to the Press.

Why this conspiracy of silence?

It occurred to him as a somewhat remote and rather ridiculous
possibility that those equipped to deal with the data in the ship
might question its authenticity, might find themselves unable to

NEBULA

define it as true or false. And then somebody with a strong imagina-
tion may have advanced the theory that the ship and its contents
were all an elaborate hoax.

Though far-fetched, such a theory would explain the missing
crew. They had not landed. They had never arrived. They had
suffered some indescribable fate and something else had brought
the ship home, something strictly non-human and now running
loose. Or, alternatively, the crew had brought back the ship while
possessed by parasitic masters now roaming the earth within their
human hosts.

Fantastic and perhaps a little stupid. But if irresponsible
journalists concocted such ideas for the sake of sensationalism, as
well they might in dealing with the mystery of Mi, they would scare
the living daylights out of the general public. Official silence alone
could prevent a wholesale stampede.

He shrugged fatalistically, fished out of his case a tattered news-
paper that he’d found among some old wrappings a few days ago.
Sitting on his bed he opened it for the umpteenth time and scanned
the print. Whenever he did this he marvelled at how quickly
bygone events fade from public memory. Today, at the present
date, the main subject of interest was the final stage of the Scarpilo
murder trial. Probably not one person of the large number in court
could recall the names of those who had made the headlines in this
newspaper now two years old.

Mi takes off.

Luna City. 9.0 GMT. The first ship to Mars roared into an
airless sky and vanished precisely at deadline this morning. Pilot
James Vail and Co-pilot Richard Kingston are on their way to the
greatest triumph in human history. By the time this report reaches
the streets the long arm of Mankind will be extended far, far into
the cosmos.

And so it went on and on. Pages full of hallelujahs. Pictures
of Vail, dark-haired and solemn. Pictures of Kingston, fair, curly,
grinning like a cat that is about to swipe the cream. Pictures of the
World President pressing the button that banged-off the boat by
remote control. Articles by various scientists about the men, the
ship, the equipment. Essays on how they’d cope with Martian con-
ditions, what they hoped to discover.

A nine days wonder. It had remained no more until the time
came when the ship was due back. Then the papers and pubhc
interest had perked up again.

Mi EXPECTED SOON.

BITTER END

3 ^

Mi any day now.

More pictures, more articles, more anticipatory huzzahs. It
was, they declared, a coming thunderclap in human affairs.

Nothing happened.

The ominous note sounded two or three weeks later with the
vessel that much overdue. Gloom built up through the next month
and ended in grim acceptance of disaster. Mi was no more. Vail
and Kingston had paid for Mars in the same way that twenty or more
had paid with their lives for the Moon. Requiescat in pace.

And better luck next time.

Vail idly wondered whether the tardy return and official dis-
covery of Mi had delayed or accelerated that same next time.
Nothing he had read to date made any mention of, any Ma. The
authorities had a habit of keeping such things secret until the last
moment. However, it was most probable that up there high in the
sky upon Luna another ship was taking shape and two or perhaps
three men were preparing for tiie second assault upon the Red
Planet.

There lay the major reason for a determined, persistent pursuit
of himself. The powers-'.Iiat-be would never be satisfied with the
data he had left for them. They would want the answers to other

NEBULA

questions. They would want the story from his own lips, the whole
story.

What had he left them? One, there was a complete technical
record of the ship’s flight performance outward and inward. Two,
the story of the main driver tube’s crack-up, how they’d repaired it
and how long it had taken. Three, full details of faults or
inadequacies in equipment, of which there had proved not a few.

Samples of Martian sand and bedrock, spa and quartz, plus
flakes of queer, lignite-like substance that were anisotropic and
therefore of possible use to radar. Several string-thin earthworms,
fourteen feet long, coiled into pickle-jars. Also suspended in for-
malin were a few of those harmless wrigglers that might be either
true snakes or legless lizardk Eight species of insects. Twenty-
seven varieties of lichens. Thirty of tiny fungi. Nothing big
because Mars harboured no life-forms of noteworthy size.

And he had left them general data in great quantity. Water
dispersion maps showing supplies sparse except within two hundred
miles of polar-cap rims. Gravitic, magnetic field, photon intensity
and numerous other measurements. Temperature records running
between 30 °C and minus 8o°C. Oxygen pressure meterings from
.5 to .9 mm. Hg. Notes by the bookfull and graphs by the yard.
It had been done as thoroughly as mortal men could do it.

But it wasn’t enough.

A small part of the tale had been left out and they’d want that
too — in his own words.

To hell with them!

In the mid-morning ten days later the shop foreman yelled,
“Harry!”

It went in one ear and out the other.

The foreman crossed the floor, nudged him. “Are you deaf?
I just called you. You’re wanted at the front oflSce immediately.
They say it’s urgent.”

Vail cut off his flame with a faint pop, closed the valves on the
gas cylinders, removed his helmet and dark glasses. He tramped
along a chequerplate catwalk, down steel stairs to the outside. Per-
haps they intended to transfer him to another part of the plant, he
hazarded. But what could be urgent about that? More likely that
they’d decided to fire him. Or perhaps somebody wanted to ques-
tion him. He became wary at the thought of it. Reaching the
corner he turned toward the office building which was constructed
somewhat in the style of a glasshouse.

BiTTER END

That was the hunters’ first mistake: waiting in plain view. Their
second was in being accompanied by a policeman in uniform. Vail
saw the deputation in the foyer before they had seen him. Turning
again and trying hard to look like a worker on some errand from
one part of the plant to another, he moved swiftly into the narrow
alley alongside the girder shop, reached the farther end, made his
way to the time office beside the main gates.

There he found his card and clocked out. The watchman on
duty ostentatiously consulted the time and looked him over with
some suspicion.

“ What’s the matter with you?”

“ I’m going home.”

“ Who said you could?”

“ That’s no business, of yours.* You tend to your own affairs
and leave the bosses to cope with theirs.”

So saying, Vail walked out leaving the other disgruntled but
not inclined to take action. Going straight to his room he packed
in great haste, paid his bill and called a taxi. Although he did not
know it he escaped by little more than one minute. The taxi was
hardly out of sight when two men arrived, checked the address,
strolled inside and came out running. They snooped around the
station half an hour after his train had departed.

Telephone wires hummed along four routes taken by locomotives
during those thirty minutes. Distant bus stations were watched. Police
cars and motor-cycles patrolled all exit roads from the town.
Switchmen and brakemen searched assembled freight trains and
marshalling yards for characters trying to ride on the rods or the
roofs. Life became a misery for a few toughs, tramps and petty
criminals.

For all this, they did not get him. Failure was their lot once
again. Vail’s wits had perked up along with the increasing health
of his body. He had a mind designed for split-second decisions and
equally quick translation into action. A test pilot’s mind accus-
tomed to facing sudden and grave problems and snatching the only
way out.

Weeks ago, long weary weeks ago he had weighed up a major
crisis, dealt with it and thereby created his present fix, there being
no alternative in sight. Now he was dealing with the result in the
only possible way: by keeping on the run until he was caught or
forgotten. If they caught him he would surrender all the information
that they wanted. But they must catch him first. On the other hand,

NEBULA

if he could avoid capture long enough they might forget him or
dismiss him as of no consequence. That could happen if the hunt
were overtaken by the march of events. For instance, his impor-
tance would shrink to well-nigh nothing if another ship made a
successful landing upon Mars.

Eighty-five miles out of town the train slowed as it approached
a crossing. A travelling circus was the cause. It had halted in a
colourful, mile-long procession waiting for the train to pass. The
engine-driver reduced speed to a crawl for the sake of a line of
nervous, fidgety elephants at the head.

Everyone gaped through the nearest windows at the circus. By
the time they looked back Vail had dropped out on the opposite side,
case in hand. He got a lift on the tailboard of a lion cage, sharing
it with an unshaven individual' who could take out his teeth and
force his bottom lip right up over his nose.

Forty miles farther on he had a new job. The circus arrived
at its pitch and he was hired as a stake-driver, rope-puller and
general factotum. He dragged heavy canvas until his finger-tips were
raw, watched the Big Top rise billowing and huge. He helped set
up the wire ropes, ladders and trapezes for the Flying Artellos,
learned to address the Big Fat Lady as Daisy and the India Rubber
Man as Herman. He learned to refer to lions as cats and to
elephants as bulls, to grab a stake and yell, “ Hey, Rube!” when
local hooligans mauled a barker or tried to wreck a side-show.

This was far different from the factory, especially in one im-
portant respect — nobody commented upon his secretiveness, nobody
tried to pry into his past. They did not care a hoot if he was an
impoverished embezzler come to the end of his loot or the King
of Siam travelling incognito. The circus folk took him exactly as
they found him and put their own valuation upon him without
wishing to know more. This alone would have made him reason-
ably happy — if memories can be dismissed.

But they cannot, they cannot.

Though repressed, the depths of his mind remained with him.
One night he had a vivid dream as restlessly he tossed upon a
straw bed. He was racing at top speed through a long, dark tunnel,
his feet gradually growing heavier and heavier. Other feet were
pounding behind and drawing inexorably nearer. He made frantic
but futile efforts to increase pace but failed. Voices called hoarsely
in loud command.

He ignored the voices and sweated with the strain of trying to
make his sluggish feet move impossibly fast. A reverberating blast

BITTER END

sounded from the rear and a stream of bullets flew over his left
shoulder. The next lot, he knew, would catch him right in the
back, breaking his spine and tearing his heart. His shoulder-blades
cringed in anticipation as he tried to drag boots now weighing a ton
apiece. The tunnel was endless and offered no other avenue of
escape. The voices bawled again. This was it!

Violent jerking woke him up. Someone was shaking his
shoulder. He opened his eyes, saw above him the emaciated features
of Albert, the Human Skeleton. Because of what was secreted
within his mind, this vision was even worse than the dream. The
shock of it made him try to yell but no sound came out.

“ Gosh,” said Albert, “ you gave me a turn carrying on that
way.” .

Vail sat up and rubbed his eyes. “ I had a bad nightmare.”

“ You must have. You were flat on your back and peddling
an invisible bike just as fast as you could go. You aren’t feeling
sick, are you?”

“ No, I’m all right. Don’t worry about me. It was just a
dream.”

The Human Skeleton returned to his straw bag, lay down and
folded hands across his skinny middle. It was a pose that held
unconscious horror; he looked long overdue for his box.

Vail shivered, turned onto his side and closed his eyes. He
could not sleep now. His brain seemed stimulated into abnormal
activity and insisted upon pondering the situation.

In some manner he’d been traced to that factory, how he did
not know. Possibly by sheer persistent legwork on the part of
many. That meant they were definitely after him. The chase was
more than a mere expectation of his own, it was a reality. And
that in turn meant that despite official silence Mi had been found.

Therefore he would have to keep trailing the trail no matter
how smooth and enticing any section of it might be. He must not
succumb to the temptation to stay with the circus too long. Neither
must he hang around the next place or the next. No rest for the
wicked was a trite remark now being frighteningly illustrated.

When the hunt keeps on the move the fox cannot sit for ever
in the covert.

He found employment for the last time a thousand miles east-
ward. He had crossed the continent and now could go no farther
without taking to the seas. That was an idea not to be discarded;

NEBULA

sailors pass out of reach for long periods and can be most difficult to
trace, especially, when they desert their ships in foreign ports.

For the time being he was satisfied with a checker’s post on the
loading-bay of a plant making cardboard containers. It paid
modestly, enabled him to have a cheap apartment in a slightly squalid
house a mile away and, above all, it kept him concealed among the
labouring hordes.

Eleven weeks had gone by since he’d gained a lift on that red
truck but still the radio, video and newspapers had let out not a
squeak. What discussions and arguments had taken place in official
and scientific circles could be left to the imagination. The missing
part of the story would have saved them a lot of breath, enabled
them to see his problem and appreciate its sole solution. But he
had denied them those details, leaving them with nothing but tanta-
lising mystery.

Oh, the quandary he and Kingston had been compelled to con-
template. That broken driving-tube and the precious weeks it had
consumed in putting right. The inevitability of planetary motions
that can be slowed or halted for no man. The fatal time that must
be spent awaiting the next moment of vantage.

They had filled in a good deal of that time by making further
but useless tests, raking Mars for what it had to offer and finding
the cupboard appallingly bare. In his mind’s eye he could see
Kingston now, retching violently beside an overturned cooker. Not
one of the thirty fungi or the twenty-seven lichens was edible. Not
one. They could be swallowed fresh, boiled, baked or fried, and
they went straight down and came straight up, leaving a man feeling
ten times worse than before.

The question they’d had to answer was a very simple one,
namely, whether to get the ship back to Earth at any cost or
whether to let it rot in the pink sands of Mars forever. Deep in
their hearts both knew that there was only one response — Mi must
return. It could be done and they knew how it could be done but
never on this side of heaven could they agree about how to apply the
method. The solution was not one for calm, reasoned discussion.
It was for prompt settlement in one way only.

Brooding over these things as he sat on the edge of his bed,
he heard a knock, answered it without thinking. A moment later
he knew that he had blundered. Two large men in plain clothes
muscled their way through the open door.

The newcomers stood side by side estimating him with hard,
shrewd eyes. Yet a mite of uncertainty lay below their normal

BITTER END

assurance. This was the first time within their experience that they
had been ordered to bring in a man without knowing tlie reason
and without legal justification for arrest. Presumably he should be
requested to come along as a special favour — and be carried out
bodily if he refused. Anyway, this defiaitely was one of the wanted
pair. The other might not be far away.

“ You are James Vail,” harshed the older of the two. He
voiced it as a statement rather than a question.

“ Yes.”

No use denying it. The hunt has ended all too soon. The
law’s nation-wide net had proved more efficient and far harder to
evade than he’d thought possible. Eleven weeks, that was all he’d
lasted, a mere eleven weeks. An^ in that time they’d picked him
out from among two hundred millions.

Well, they had got him. Lies might serve to delay the issue
but never to avert it. Truth must out sooner or later and perhaps
he had been a fool in trying to conceal it. Get it over and done
with. Get it off the mind on which it had weighed too long.
Strangely enough he thought of that with a sense of vast relief.

“ Where is Kingston?” demanded the other hopefully.

James Vail faced him, hands dangling. He felt as if his belly
was sticking out a mile with the whole world staring at it. The
answer came in a voice not recognisable as his own.

“ I ate him.”

ERIC FRANK RUSSELL

BACK NUMBERS . . .

In response to requests from a large number of readers we
are again offering back numbers of NEBULA for those who
are unable to obtain them from their usual supplier.

All issues from No. ii to No. 32 can be had for 2/- or 35c.
each post free. All other numbers are permanently sold out.
Cash zvith order, please, to ; NEBULA Science-Fiction,
? 159 Crownpoint Road, Glasgow, S.E. .

JAMES WHITE

Dark Talisman

He was invulnerable to any attack the human mind could
devise, but not, alas, to the vacuum of outer space

Illustration by Gerard Quinn

Nixon hung in space, turning slowly : The stars, a few
planets, and the bright, close Sun made endless, monotonous circles
around his space-suited body. Nixon was suffering — terribly. Now
that the Sun was so near he was suffering the tortures of the damned.

“ The gadget does not give immortality,” the Doc had told
him. But Nixon felt that already an eternity had passed since he’d
been blown off the ship — an eternity of raw, screaming agony that
was mercifully broken only by the regular, fleeting instants of black
unconsciousness, and the even briefer periods that were pain free.
It was during these periods, when his brain was in a condition to
think objectively and his ears capable of performing their function,
that he sometimes heard the Doc’s voice in his ’phones. Sometimes
he even understood what it said.

The Doc’s spaceship was somewhere in the neighbourhood,
hunting him. The Doc, who was also his brother, hated him very
38

DARK TALISMAN

much. He was trying to kill Nixon. He was trying hard, because
the Doc didn’t hate Nixon enough just to leave him alone.

People were right about one thing, Nixon thought: just before
a person died, his whole life passed before bis eyes. Nixon had been
dying for so long that this particular phenomenon had begun to bore
him. He had been dying — -constantly — ^for a whole week.

It was like being forced to watch a film over and over again, ex-
cept that this wasn’t — entertainment. His life had been interesting,
even exciting, in spots, but it didn’t make a good film. There was
always an unhappy ending. But after a long time had passed he
solved the problem by adopting the tactics used by all cinema pro-
jectionists. Instead of watching the star — himself — he concentrated
on the background characters, the bit players.

There was Helen, the Doc’s Helen, a real nice bit player. Later
on in the film he killed her. And there was the clerk at the Physics
building. Meeting her had been the beginning of this present mess,
though he hadn’t known it at the time. He could see her again —
blonde, beautiful, and briskly efficient, running a highly-pohshed
fingernail down a list of appointments and saying: “Room 413, Mr.
Nixon. You’re expected.” Her smile had been nice, but impersonal.
Very impersonal.

Nixon turned quickly to hide the bitterness in his face, and
headed for the elevator.

At eye level on the door of Room 413 a small brown plaque
bore the name “Dr. Charles L. Nixon,” followed by a couple of
degrees. If the Doc had used all his degrees, Nixon thought sar-
donically, he’d have needed another door. But the Doc was a very
modest individual who didn’t believe in throwing his mental weight
around. Nixon wasn’t Uke his brother at all.

The chief difference was that Nixon had no weight — either
physical or mental — to throw around. He was tall, thin, and
awkward. His features were not unhandsome, but any attractiveness
they possessed was spoiled by their constant and disquieting
mobility. It was the outward symptoms of a strange mental disease,
a peculiar and highly-personal disease which he’d named Overdoing.
Nixon overdid things, constantly.

Whether he was selling brushes, books, or insurance, applying for
a job, or just trying to date a girl, he put everything he had into it —
and invariably messed things up. He put his customers’ backs up
immediately, left prospective employers with the impression that he
was a loud-mouthed jelly-fish with a yen for licking boots, and he

NEBULA

writhed at the memory of v/hat some of those girls had called him.
Everything he tried failed; he’d been dogged by the most fantastic
ill-luck since early youth, and now his chronic lack of self-confidence
was showing itself physically in twitching features, shaking hands,
and a personality that was anything but what he tried to make it.

Angrily, Nixon pushed the thoughts of despair and self-pity out
of his mind. He’d been unlucky all his life, he thought as he pressed
the bell-push, but his luck was bound to change soon. Maybe it
would be to-day — a few seconds from now — ^when he would see his
brother.

Nixon smiled, feeling ahnost light-hearted. The Doc and him-
self had one thing in common: they were both, after their ov;n
fashions, mathematicians. But where his brother used abstract
symbohsm to reach a solution, Nixon calculated probabilities from
solid flesh and blood variables — such as the age and staying power
of the nag, and the weight, ability, and will-to-win of the jockey.
Naturally he failed in this also, as did thousands of others. But
typically, his failure was immeasurably greater.

Nixon had overdone things. He owed some very hard men an
awful lot of money. This time his failure could quite easily have
been fatal if it hadn’t been for tltat letter from his brother.

As footsteps approached the other side of the door, Nixon felt
himself beginning to sweat. He’d never liked his brother, and hadn’t
seen him in five years. Should he act glad to see the Doc? Or
casual, off-hand? So very much depended on this. When the door
qpened, indecision was fast bringing him to the verge of panic.

He said: “Hi, Charlie!” then felt like kicking himself. His
brother hated being called ‘ Charlie ’. Oh, he’d started well.

“Hello, Ben,” the other said, apparently not noticing the slip.
His brother was a slightly older duplicate of Nixon himself, but
somehow managed to look tall, austere, and distinguished instead of
skinny, foolish, and awkvrard as did his brother. The Doc held open
the door and inclined his head. “ We’re all ready for you. Go straight
through to the lab, please.”

Nixon crossed a small anteroom whose ceiling seemed to be
supported by packed rows of book-shelves, with an occasional filing
cabinet here and there to strengthen the construction, and into the
laboratory. The lab. had been rented and equipped, he knew, by
one of the leading electrical firms with the idea of keeping his brother
amused — and, of course, to help him work out some of his wild ideas.
To keep the Doc further amused the firm sent him cheques.

DARK TALSSMAN

-41

regularly and at short intervals. It was one of the shrewdest invest-
ments the firm had ever made, because his brother was a very
brilliant scientist.

The place vras large, Nixon saw at once, but the amount of stuff
packed into it made it look small. A fair amount of the gadgetry
was grouped in uneven tiers around a cleared area of the floor, which
contained in its centre a very ordinary leather armchair. His brother
nodded towards it.

“ That’s for you,” he said, then turned and called out, “ Helen !
If you’re finished back there, we’re ready to go.”

Ni.xon St: red as a dark-haired girl straightened from behind a
bench and came towards them. She wore a grey lab coat over dark
blue sweater, slacks, and tennis slippers, and the whole room seemed
suddenly to light up. But that was silly, because high-wattage
fiuorescents were making the place three times brighter than day
already. She was young, yet looked motherly, somehow — not the
type, Nixon thought, to laugh or make him feel foolish. He felt
himself grinning widely, and as his brother introduced them he knew
he was talking and joking a lot, and trying desperately to be bright
and engaging. He was very sorry, but not too surprised, when she
suddenly stopped smiling and became interested only in some
equipment nearby.

He’d been trying too hard again, behaving like an uninhibited
adolescent ape instead of a fairly-civilised man. He’d scared her off.

“ I’m anxious to start as soon as possible,” his brother said.
“ You know what I want to do, and you wouldn’t be here if you
hadn’t agreed to it, so if you don’t mind. . . .”

Nixon held out his right hand and rubbed the thumb and index
finger together gently. He smiled hesitantly, not using the tongue
that got him into nothing but trouble.

“ Oh, of course,” his brother said impatiently, and took a thick
envelope out of his breast pocket and gave it to Nixon. He sounded
faintly contemptuous.

“ Thanks,” Nixon said. “ B — but before we start there’s some-
thing I want to know.”

His brother grunted and opened a grey metal box that lay on
the bench beside Nixon’s chair. The box contained a set of surgical
scalpels. Nixon w'inced and went on:

“ About these tests. You said you wanted to try out a gadget
that wou’d necetsitate cutting me up a trifle. Nothing drastic, of
course, but just a few nicks off an ear-lobe or finger, and there would

NEBULA

be little or no pain attached. You hinted that there might be danger,
but thought it slight as you’d already tested the gadget on yourself.”
Nixon wet his lips nervously. “ Also, if I submitted to these tests
you would give me a large sum of money, and you named the figure.

“ Now,” Nixon watched his brother’s features carefully as he
went on, trying to keep the fear and suspicion he suddenly felt from
showing in his voice, “ I know you don’t like me, and on the face of
it this looks as if you’re giving me money — a whole lot of money —
for practically nothing, so I want to know two things.

“ What are the tests supposed to prove, and why did you pick

me?”

His brother stared at him, an unreadable expression on his face.
Nixon thought he caught a todch of pity in that look, but of course
that was silly. After what seemed a long time the other said care-
fully, “ You’re mistaken, Ben. I don’t dislike you exactly. I cer-
tainly don’t approve of some of the things you’ve done. . . .” He
gave a baffled shake of his head. “ But let’s skip that. To answer
your questions, I picked you because the ‘ gadget ’ you refer to has
got to be kept secret, and it has a better chance of staying a secret if
we keep it in the family, which is the reason I wanted you for the
tests. You see, I can’t investigate the thing properly while I’m also
the guinea-pig.”

He ended simply: “ The only way I could get you was to offer
you money.”

Nixon looked quickly at Helen, then back to the Doc.

“ Helen is not a member of the family — yet,” he said, answering
Nixon’s unspoken question, “ and she hasn’t been tested because
there is still an element of risk involved. However,” he went on
impatientiy, “ I’ll teU you everything I know about the ‘ Gadget ’
while I’m strapping it in position.”

The whole thing had been a fluke, his brother explained, the
sort of fluke that makes a billion-to-one probability look like a dead
certainty by comparison. Dr. Nixon had been asked to try to develop
a method of projecting true, three-dimensional images suitable for in-
door viewing without distortion. The three-D effect could be
obtained successfully in theatres and such places by various illusory
means, but these methods weren’t practicable for home use. The
Doc had eventually solved the problem. Then, after handing over
the solution for the addition of the necessary commercial refinements,
he thought he’d have a little fun with the effect he’d discovered.

He made a cigarette lighter.

DARK TALISMAN

His ultra-respectable brother pulling a trick like that. Nixon
could hardly beheve his ears.

The Doc had made a large, ornate, pocket lighter. It would be
great fun, he’d thought, to play tricks on his eminent friends by
offering to light their cigarettes with the three-dimensional projected
recording of a candle flame. He’d imagined their baffled expressions
as they sucked and sucked and the tobacco didn’t even smoulder. It
would have been a very amusing sight.

Nixon thought that his brotlier had a very simple mind, but he
kept the thought to himself. He could think of several ways the
other could have used that effect. Profitably.

His brother ended, “ It didn’t work — at least not the way I ex-
pected.” He gave a sigh. “Oh, ^ wish I’d taken detailed notes,
instead of just throwing it together for amusement.”

The lighter was now attached to Nixon’s forehead by two soft
leather straps, and the metal casing felt cold against his skin. His
brother gave the fastenings a last hitch, straightened up, and nodded
at Helen. She began moving around quickly, doing complicated
things with the equipment surrounding Nixon’s chair. The equip-
ment hummed, whined, and made clicking noises. Some of it lit up,
and there was a strong smell of ozone.

“ Disregard that stuff,” his brother said reassuringly. “ You’re
safe where you are. It’s just some detecting and analysing gear
designed to tell us how — and I hope why — this gadget we’re testing
works.” He took a scalpel from the box and made an inch long
incision on the ball of Nixon’s thumb, then said quickly: “ Bend it
a little so it bleeds onto that blotter, then watch it for three seconds.”
He dropped the scalpel and almost ran to one of his detectors, his
eyes darting wildly about as he tried to read about twenty dials at
the same time. He was sweating profusely. Nixon brought his
attention back to the cut in his thumb. He watched it, closely.

Three seconds after the cut had been made, it disappeared.
Completely. The few drops of blood that had fallen onto the blotter
were gone, too. Nixon nearly slid out of his chair.

But he recovered from the shock quickly. There were a lot of
questions he wanted to ask. He opened his mouth, then shut it
again, because his own mind was giving him most of the answers
already. They were wonderful answers.

This, Nixon thought with savage exultation, was at last his lucky
day. That gadget: the more he thought of it the more wildly in-
toxicated he became. Joy was an emotion rare to Nixon, and hard
to conceal. He fought to keep his face blank.

NEBULA

A short distance away Helen eyed his brother with some con-
cern. The Doc was muttering and glaring at a battery of detectors,
each one of which assured him that nothing whatever had taken
place. After a time he calmed down, apologised to Helen for his
language, and asked Nixon if he’d mind a few more tests. Nixon
nodded assent.

During the hours that followed, Nixon was cut by the Doc more
times than he could remember. But he was too excited to feel any
pain. At one stage he had to make an incision himself in one corner
of the lab, then dash to the opposite corner before the three seconds
were up. But the results were the same — the cut healed instantly,
and the blood he’d left thirty feet away disappeared. When it was
all over, Nixon knew what the 'gadget could do, but neither he nor
the others present had any idea how it did it. The Doc’s instruments
persisted in completely ignoring the gadget’s existence.

Nixon hadn’t said anything for a long time. He’d been thinking,
hard, and slowly reaching a decision.

He asked quietly, “Immortality, Doc?”

His brother had been staring into the middle distance for the
last ten minutes. He shook himself suddenly, and said, “ Of course
not.”

Nixon let that go for the moment. “How’s it powered, then?
You haven’t told me that yet.”

“ It isn’t,” his brother replied. “ It doesn’t use the batteries
built into it, or any other source of power that I can detect.” He
looked gloomily at the equipment crowding tlie room. “I don’t
know how it works exactly, but if you want an informed wild
guess. . . .?”

The Doc rubbed a hand across his eyes. Nixon could see that
this business had cost him a lot of sleep recently. Then his brother
sighed, and began using his lecture-room voice.

“ The original purpose of the lighter was to project a small,
three-dimensional moving image in full detail, which means that the
image had to be set up and broken down again several times a second,
in much the same way as a flat screen moving picture is produced.
But, instead of projecting an insubstantial pattern of light rays, this
gadget scans any living organism — we know it doesn’t work on in-
animate objects — that it is in contact with, and reproduces it perfectly
if that organism is damaged in any way. And should the organism
lose any parts, the missing pieces are collected somehow, and fitted
back into place.

DARK TALISMAN

“ You saw how the blood spots disappeared each time an
incision healed.

“This is fundamental stuff — it doesn’t operate in any of the
known electro-magnetic spectra — which I’ve stumbled into by sheer
chance. And from what I know of the laws of probability, it would
take centuries of research before I could hit on it again — unless, of
course, somebody discovered the principle on which this effect is
based. My knowledge of physics — specifically the laws concerning
the conservation of mass and energy — make me certain that the power
used is drawn from a space-time continuum other than our own.”

The Doc straightened from the bench and came towards Nixon.
As he bent to unstrap the lighter from Nixon’s forehead, his brother
continued, “ You remembered each test after it occurred, so obviously
your brain cells aged in the normal way. Otherwise your memory
would have ceased at the point of the first test. Therefore, if your
brain cells aged, then the rest of you did likewise. That is why I’m
certain about the gadget not giving immortality.”

Nixon felt himself go cold all over as the Doc’s fingers began
loosening the fastenings. His voice shook as he said, “ It’s still a
handy gadget to have around if there was an accident.” To himself
he thought: a very handy gadget. The decision he’d made didn’t
seem a bit wrong.

Like most people that Fate had a grudge against, Nixon was
superstitious. In many vain attempts to break his life-long jinx he’d
worn rabbit’s feet, carried coal in his pockets, and did things Vv^hich
even he knew were silly; in short, he’d tried everything. But this
was different. This was the ultimate in luck charms, for it gave
complete protection against bodily injury, and even death — except,
of course, through old age. With the Doc’s gadget he could be
another Achilles, but sans the latter’s trick foot. Fate, Nixon realised,
after giving him a lifetime of the most wretched ill luck, was at last
making it up to him. He was meant to have this gadget, and he
would have it. No matter what.

Carefully, Nixon said, “ How about a few more tests?”

“ No, no more.” The Doc shook his head and went on gravely,
“ You can see why I wanted this kept secret. It’s a terrible respon-
sibility. By right I should get a lot of the top men working on it,
trying to make duplicates, maybe, but I don’t know. Suppose it fell
into the wrong hands, someone with a yen for power, ' maybe. An
indestructible dictator, or an unkillable criminal. . . .” He turned

NEBULA

his head away, but the worry still sounded strongly in his voice.
“ I — I don’t know what to do with the thing.”

Nixon looked hungrily at the enigmatic lighter now lying on the
bench-top. If it were me, he thought silently, there would be no
problem. There was no use in just asking his brother for it. In the
Doc’s mind he came under the listing of ‘wrong hands.’

The Doc turned. “ You’ve been a big help, Ben,” he said
politely. “ Thanks a lot.” It was dismissal.

Nixon rose to his feet, staggering slightly and bumping into the
bench. Obviously sitting for so long in the chair had made him stiff.
He muttered something about his clumsiness, his hands, meanwhile,
moving very fast. When he turned and headed — ^not too quickly —
for the door, a lighter still lay on the bench behind him. But it was
Nixon’s lighter and not the Doc’s. Luckily, they’d been similar.

But the precaution had been unnecessary; the Doc hadn’t even
looked around. Probably still worrjdng, Nixon thought, laughing to
himself, about the gadget falling into the wrong hands.

Nixon didn’t think that he was the criminal or power-hungry
type. He’d probably have to break a few laws if he was to provide
himself with a life of comfort, but after that he just wanted to settle
down and enjoy his indestructible life. And the beauty of it was that
his brother couldn’t tell the police or anyone else of the theft —
net without telling the whole truth about the gadget. No matter
what way Nixon looked at it, he was on top. He could hardly feel
his feet touch to lab floor he felt so high.

A hand caught his elbow.

He’d forgotten Helen completely. But now he could see from
her eyes that she’d seen him switch the lighters, and her mouth was
opening to tell the Doc all about it, loudly. In sudden panic he gave
her a rough, open-handed push out of the way and ran the last few
yards to the door. He hoped he hadn’t hurt her; it was the first
time he’d laid violent hands on a woman.

As he reached it, the door and the whole room lit with a bright
green flash. Nixon whirled, and felt suddenly sick. Helen lay,
where he’d pushed her, among what had been some highly-charged
apparatus. It had now discharged itself, through Helen. A greasy
cloud of smoke, with the nauseating stench of burned hair drifted
towards him. He couldn’t move.

It wasn’t until his cheek was ripped open from eye to jaw that
he came out of his shock, to find his brother attacking him with
hands, feet, and teeth. But this wasn’t his brother. This was a beast.

DARK TALISMAN

a vicious, feral fuller. Fighting desperately for his life, some cool,
detached portion of his mind still had time to observe that the Doc
must have loved Helen to turn him into an animal like this; He
must have loved her very much.

But the Doc’s fury, terrible though it was, was blind. It made
him claw and tear when he should have punched. Nixon was more
scientific, but he took an awful lot of punishment before he got the
grip he wanted. Then his brother’s head hit the lab floor with a
surprisingly loud crack, and it was all over.

Outside, a woman screamed at the sight of Nixon’s torn face
and blood-covered clothes. She kept at it while he leaned weakly
against the wall and fumbled for the Doc’s gadget. When three
seconds later he straightened, the blood gone and his face intact, the
woman stopped screaming and fainted. Nixon hurried past her,
trying hard not to think he was a double murderer.

But the Doc hadn’t died from his skull fracture, and because
of that near-miracle, Nixon was in his present mess.

The blazing splendour that was the eternal night of space
wheeled slowly and majestically around him. But Nixon could only
catch glimpses of it — his eyes were always first to go. With his ears
it was different : heavy, tight-fitting ’phones kept them from bursting.
He could hear fairly well, but only during the instants before the
exploding agony of his body turned his brains to acid in his head.
In the periods between blackout and the pain he could hear his
brother’s voice talking to somebody else aboard the ship. There were
a lot of gaps, but he understood enough to know that they intended
using a guided missile on him. After an eternity of pain — perhaps
ten minutes — the talking ceased.

The exciting, badly-produced, and strictly down-beat movie that
was his life began to unwind again. He couldn’t do a thing about it.

Money being his first necessity, Nixon had decided to rob a
bank. The attempt was both successful and a failure. He got the
money all right, but he was twice seen by guards on the way out, and
shot. It was very painful. The only reason he got away was because of
the mental shock to the guards of a riddled body that wouldn’t lie
down dead for more than three seconds. Their expressions had been
indescribable; one of them had burst into tears.

He could have saved himself some of the pain if he’d returned
the guards’ fire, but he kept telling himself always that he wasn’t
really a murderer. His next job was better planned, and painless.

Nixon had discovered r|iTr the ftadget functioned perfectly no

NEBULA

matter what part of his body it made contact with, so he had it fitted
to the inside of a wide leather and steel mesh belt, and wore it
around his waist. He never took it off. It couldn’t be taken off by
anyone without cutting him in two, and if he wanted to remove it,
it would take half an hour.

The gadget v/as fool-proof, of course. Even when a bullet lodged
inside him, it was expelled as not being a normal part of his body.

He had all the wealth he needed to keep him happy for the
rest of his life, but it had now become impossible for him to settle
dov/n anywhere to enjoy it. Since his brother had left hospital, a
v/ide-spread, though undercover, hunt for Nixon had begun. Because
of Helen the Doc hated him very much, so much that he’d broken
his self-imposed oath of secrecy regarding the gadget. But his
brother could do nothing alone’, and neither could ordinary police
assistance help much. So, being a very eminent scientist, the Doc
had gene to the top, explained the position, and asked for help. He’d
been given it.

Now, everywhere that Nixon went, no matter what disguise or
method of concealment he used, hard-eyed, unobtrusive, implacable
men — men with cyphers instead of names, and with practically un-
limited authority — were close behind him.

They couldn’t kill him by ordinary means, though they tried
often enough. But there were traps, which could be laid
if they were given enough time. Nixon had almost been caught once
— by netting and a door-handle wired for five hundred volts — so
now he wanted to keep moving around and not give them any time
at all. Even then he knew that they would eventually get him.
There was nowhere that was safe for him in the whole wide world.

The answer was, naturally, to get off it.

Taking a lot of trouble to cover his tracks, Nixon went to Mars.
But space-travel is a very expensive business: he arrived at the
martian colony practically broke.

The economic system — and the banks — were different there.
The only thing both easily portable and extremely valuable were the
Mars-processed artificial radio-actives, and anyone even trying to get
near one of those precious nuggets would die of radiation poisoning
in an hour. Nixon had the gadget, however, and a plan that was
fool-proof.

Ben Nixon, he thought sardonically, space pirate!

They were an imsuspicious lot on Mars. He had no difficulty
finding out about shipments and departure times, and very little

DARK TALISMAN

trouble obtaining passage on the ship he wanted — a recently com-
missioned job called the Queen Titania. He was good at disguise
now, but intended staying in his hammock most of the time, just in
case. His plan was simple. Just before the ship’s two-G acceleration
was shut off prior to the Turnover, he would don his spacesuit. Then,
during the several minutes it took the ship to swap ends, he would
go quickly to the shielded compartment containing the radio-actives.
There would be no guards because nobody could live in the storage
compartment for long — it was both open to space and flooded with
lethal radiations.

The radio-actives compartment had an airlock, Nixon would
open the inner seal, close it behind him, and wait inside the lock
until the ship was close to the Moon. When the bomb — a fairly
harmless gimmick that was all noise and smoke — which he’d have
planted previously went off, he would enter the compartment. During
the resultant confusion he would shoot the tiny ingot of radio-active
material down to the Moon in one of the ship’s message rockets,
making sure that it landed near a conspicuous land-mark where it
could be retrieved later. By keeping his glare visor down and prc-

NEBULA

tending to be a crew-man investigating a damage report, he would
take the first opportunity to return to his cabin.

There were several men on the Moon, representatives of firms
which were always chronically short of radio-actives, who would take
the stuff with no questions asked.

It was a nice plan, but it didn’t work out like that at all.

Nixon had noticed one of the new Government ships land just
before the Titania took off. He didn’t know that it took off seconds
after he did, and with the same course and velocity. Neither did he
know that the Doc and some of his high-powered help was aboard it
— until the shutting dov/n of both ships’ A-Drive units at Turnover
made radio contact between them possible. Then he heard his
brother talking rapidly over the General Circuit, and he knew that
everyone aboard was hearing the other’s warning. His only chance
was to get to the radio-actives compartment quick, -before they
started searching the ship. Nobody, he hoped, would think of looking
for him there.

But there was a crew-man with a gun in the passage leading to
the compartment. When the man saw Nixon, spacesuited and carry-
ing the message rocket, he called “You! Stop!” and pointed his
gun. Nixon was already pointing his. He fired, the reaction due to
the absence of gravity sending him whirling backwards. When he’d
steadied himself against the wall-net he saw the crew-man drifting
down the corridor, doubled up, and with a lot of red on his blouse
and shorts. His lack of feelings over what he had done frightened
him suddenly. Was he becoming a killer?

Somebody was coming along the same corridor, and wearing a
spacesuit by the sound of him. Nixon had no time to waste on a
troublesome conscience.

He didn’t want to start a battle — a misplaced bullet could easily
wreck the ship, and that would be serious. Nixon had to hide; but
he couldn’t enter the radio-actives lock without the approaching
crew'-man seeing him. What to do?

Suddenly he had it. There was another small air-lock close by,
which was used when a check on the exposed sections of the Drive
became necessary. He made for it, breaking a smoke bulb behind
him to hide his intentions. He could enter the compartment by
walking along the outer hull. It was safe doing that, because the
Titania wouldn’t restart her Drive while a ship-load of government
agents were preparing to board her. Once inside, the gadget would
protect him from the radiation, and even if they did guess his hiding

DARK TALISMAN

place, he would have time to think his way out of the mess. He
still believed in his lucky piece.

But Nixon hadn’t known about the air-lock tell-tales. As soon
as he’d worked the lock controls, that fact registered on instruments
in the ship’s control room. Nixon was just about to swing open the
entry port to the radio-actives hold when the head and shoulders of
a crew-man rose from the lock he’d just left.

The crew-man shot first.

The bullet went through his shoulder and out the other side, its
kinetic energy knocking him off the ship. But the wound didn’t
matter; the gadget was still working. Then suddenly Nixon knew
that it did matter, very much, because the gadget kept on working.

When a spacesuit develops a leak, the result is explosive decom-
pression. When the leak is two large holes, the explosion is just that
much more violent. To Nixon it felt like a lot of bombs going off
inside him, all at once. His eyes went pop, his breath tore out of his
mouth and nose so fast it felt like gravel, and pressure from his body
liquids blew him out like a soggy balloon.

It was very, very painful. Nixon could never have believed that
there could be so much pain at one time. But just as the agony was
drowning itself in oblivion, the gadget would restore him good as
new, and he went through it again.

And again.

The gadget didn’t, of course, restore the holes in his spacesuit.

The Doc was first to realise what had happened. Freakishly, the
tight-fitting helmet ’phones kept Nixon’s ears in working condition.
He heard his brother’s horrified voice shouting at him, and calling
to the men in both ships to do something. But they couldn’t think
of anything to do.

After a very long time — to Nixon — there seemed to be a slight
improvement if there could be an improvement in unbearable agony.
The gadget had ceased to reproduce the air in his lungs, so he no
longer exploded so violently. During the instants just after his
restoration and before his eyes went, he saw the Titania begin to
decelerate for the second half of her trip to the Moon, while he,
with tlte ship’s terrific pre-Turnover velocity, continued on. With
his present course and speed he would miss the Moon. And Earth,
too.

When the scream of the Titania’ s A-drive interference faded
from his ’phones, his brother’s voice came again. The Government
ship was trying to pace him, and tracking him on radar.

NEBULA

There was disagreement on the ship. The Doc wanted to pick
Nixon up, and risk what he and the gadget could do when they
brought him into air again. The Government men said no; besides
that risk, they hadn’t enough fuel for the fancy m.anoeuvring that
would be necessary. The ship’s A-drive was incapable of delicate
graduations of thrust, and being electronic in nature it couldn’t
operate in an atmosphere, so they needed all their precious chemical
fuel to make a landing later. However, they were all horrified at
what was happening to Nixon. They v/anted to stop it, and let the
gadget go hang.

Then his brother had thought of the guided missile.

The Doc told him when they fired it, and for the few minutes it
took to reach him Nixon was so glad that the pain was almost
bearable.

There was an explosion — just as painful, but different from the
ones he was always having. It must have torn him apart. But the
gadget was untouched. He came to — good as new — with a few
scrapes of clothing and spacesuit still clinging to him, and the gadget,
held by that too efficient belt, still pressing against his back. It
continued as before. Somehow his ’phones and receiver were still
intact.

Nixon lived and died, lived and died, and kept on living and
dying. He wished he could go mad, but the gadget kept recon-
structing him, perfectly. And he was very tired of the psycho-
logical quirk that made him re-live his life every time it happened.
For a time he forced his brain to calculate the number of times it
had happened since he’d been blown off the ship. Then he tried to
figure out how many more times it would happen. That number
wasn’t so big, but its implications were unthinkably horrible.

The Government men were arguing with his brother again.
They wanted to go back. The ship was almost within the orbit of
Mercury; it was getting too hot. Nixon felt the heat, too.

The metal of the Doc’s gadget and the belt he wore had a very
high melting point. Nixon knew that he was headng into the Sun,
and that he would have to get very close indeed before the tempera-
ture was high enough to melt and destroy the gadget.

His brother was a very brilliant man. Nixon wished he’d think of
something quickly.

JAMES WHITE

WILLIAM F. TEMPLE

The Undiscovered

Country

On distant Pluto, sluggish outrider of the Solar System,
the natives will surely have their own methods of defence

It seemed to me I was taking part in some futuristic ballet,
slow and symbolic, paradoxically based on a lightning incident of
the legendary past: a Scottish border raid.

The chieftain’s young daughter stood with her back to us, alone,
unsuspecting, half a mile from her village. Phillips and I con-
verged gradually on her from behind, silent as the near-opaque mist
which surrounded us all.

We weren’t moving in slow motion because we feared her
detecting us: there was no chance of that. In fact, we were making
all possible speed, but our alloy space-suits were heavy even under
the lesser gravity of Pluto. The alloy had to be really thick, for the
dense atmosphere encompassing us was more than half composed of
an acid gas which ate away metal as fast as sulphuric acid dissolves
zinc.

Moreover, we had to be thoroughly insulated against the intense
cold of this sunless place.

It was one of those mad miracles of Nature that the girl needed
no protection at all against either the cold or the corrosive atmo-
sphere. Stark naked, she was at ease in her own element.

NEBULA

It was another miracle that, however different her internal
structure, and with the certainty that her body cells were of a type
beyond the knowledge, almost beyond the credence, of modern bio-
chemistry, her shape was humanoid. And very feminine. Her skin
was smooth and white. She might have been a marble Greek
goddess.

We reached her together and lifted her gently, trying not to
hurt her with our metallic fingers. She was hard and rigid and it
was indeed as though we were carrying a marble statue back to the
ship.

We followed the narrowing beam of the searchlight to its source
on the hull of the Icarus, and waited at the door of Lock Two.
There was a disturbance in the chemical-thick atmosphere around
the ship. In the dim reflected light, it was streaming like inhaled
smoke through an orifice in the hull: the pump’s sucking mouth.

We examined our captive. This unknown Plutonian girl, whom
we’d playfully styled “ the chieftain’s daughter, Pocahontas ”, had
slightly changed her position. Her elbows, which had been pressed
against her sides, were now a couple of inches from them.

Her hair was long and black, and she certainly had two human-
seeming eyes, a nose and a mouth, but it was hard to discern details
out of the direct shaft of light.

Then the pump ceased, its orifice closed like an iris lens, the
atmosphere slowed in its swirling. The glass-lined storage tank was
full to capacity with compressed Plutonian atmosphere.

In the ship. Captain Shervington pulled a lever, and the circular,
safe-like door of Lock Two swung open. Like the rest of the hull,
it was already deeply scarred with erosion. Whole patches were
blistering and bubbling like paint under a blow-torch. We slid the
stiff body through into the receptacle behind. It was like loading a
frozen carcass into the refrigerator of a meat van.

The door closed on it and we made our entry through the other
lock, into our own atmosphere. The air-lock door had scarce shut
behind us when the Icarus began to take off, the Captain having left
the pump and lock controls for the pilot’s seat.

We had come some 3,600 million miles to Pluto to spend ten
minutes there, get what we’d come for — and get out.

Tv^o ships had been here before us. They had lingered too long.
Neither returned.

The first reported the startling news that bleak Pluto was in-
habited. It had landed on the outskirts of a community of some
kind. The ship’s searchlights, enfeebled by the dark mist, just

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

revealed the rough shapes of a group of smalhsh houses but nothing
of their structure. They could have been the primitive huts of
savages — or the ultra-modern dwellings of a highly-civilised race.

The natives, humanoid and naked, did not come running. They
seemed either unperturbed or petrified. They stood around almost
like statues. But not quite. The statues were moving, with in-
finitesimal speed, towards the ship.

So reported the captain after watching them for half an hour.
It was his last report. His radio went dead. In the light of later
knowledge it was presumed that the acid atmosphere had eaten
through the antenna and probably also fatally holed the hull.

The second ship didn’t wait around so long. It sampled the
atmosphere, got a rough idea of iss nature and what it was doing
to the ship, and took off again in a hurry. The skipper’s last inter-
ference-distorted words were: “ Main jets erratic, ship difficult to
control. That terrible atmosphere seems to have eaten chunks out
of the vents. Side squirts pushing us off balance. I’m afraid ”

The rest was silence.

Plainly the skipper’s fears were realised and the ship crashed.

We, the crew of the third ship, Icarus, were at least fore-
warned. We knew we’d have no time to stop and exchange pleasan-
tries with the Plutonians, especially as it was apparent that the
tempo of a Plutonian’s life compared with a human’s was like a
snail’s compared with a fruit-fly’s.

The only way for humans to contact Plutonian life was to cap-
ture a specimen of it and take it home to study at leisure ... if it
could be kept alive long enough. And that was our mission.

We stewed in our suits as the Icarus fought to climb out of
the Plutonian gravity pit, trying not to wonder too much about the
condition of our vents. But they held out. We reached the required
speed and began the long coast home. It was a rehef to shed both
weight and the suits.

Phillips, biologist, biochemist, and medico, was now the most
responsible man of the trio, as he had always been the most accom-
plished. The bigwigs of the Institute of Planetary Biology, in the
faraway Cromwell Road, wanted to examine a living, functioning
Plutonian, not merely to dissect a corpse.

Captain Shervington, his own highest hurdle successfully
jumped, could afford indulgence when he saw anxiety creasing
Philhps’ sweaty brow.

“ Don’t panic, Phillips, we’ll all muck in and keep her in good
shape ... It is a woman?”

NEBULA

Phillips nodded so nearly imperceptibly that I felt confirmation
necessary. I said: “ It’s a woman, all right, skipper, and she’s
certainly in good shape.”

“ So I thought,” said Shervington. “ I’ve got an eye for that
sort of thing, even at forty paces on a dark Plutonian night. Let’s
have a closer peep.”

He moved, but the conscience-taut Phillips anticipated him,
hauling himself down the rungs, hand under hand, to the lower deck
where the girl floated weightlessly in the clearplast container. Lock
Two. Her outline was faintly blurred by tlie misty atmosphere
which had entered with her.

Phillips glanced at her, then busied himself with the pumps
regulating the flow of fresh atmos'phere from the supply stored under
pressure in the big tank. Considering her extremely slow rate of
respiration, there should be more than a sufficient supply to keep
her alive during the six weeks voyage home. The big problem was
that nobody knew what Plutonians ate or drank — or even if they did.

The Captain and I looked Pocahontas over carefully. With
her long hair afloat, her eyes staring wide, she looked like Ophelia
drowning.

Now that we could see her features properly, there was nothing
really unhuman about them. The pupils of her eyes were unusually
large, as though dilated by digitalis, but that was necessary for light-
gathering on darksome Pluto.

After long seconds, the skipper said quietly: “ She’s beautiful.”

“ I wonder if she has a sister?” I said.

Captain Shervington mused: “ I wonder what’s in her mind and
whether we’ll ever contact it.”

There was no more time for wondering: we had our imme-
diate jobs to do. I, navigator and signaller, had to report to Earth
via the moon-base link and take our bearings. Shervington had
to check the ship’s space-worthiness after its acid bath. Phillips
had to study his charge.

The cosmic interference was bad, and Earth sounded like an
ancient Edison phonograph. But I managed to get the report over,
and later the faint cracked voice of Shepherd, boss of the project,
filtered through: “ Well done, Icarusl”

I looked through a porthole at the dusky receding bulk of Pluto.
At about this distance, on the approach, we had regarded it appre-
hensively, and the Captain had quoted wryly: “ The undiscovered
country from whose bourne no traveller returns.”

But now we were returning and the fear which had accumulated

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

through long anticipation was fast dissolving. My spirit felt almost
as airy as my body, and Shervington’s report that the ship had
escaped with negligible damage made relief complete.

Fame and a knighthood were the prospects now.

We returned to Pocahontas. Phillips was having a field-day
with the various remotely controlled clinical gadgets with which the
clearplast container had been fitted by long-sighted scientists.. He’d
successfully clamped the pulse meter on her wrist and its indicator
was registering a full swing every half-minute.

“ That appears to mean she’s living about forty times slower
than we are,” said Phillips. “ At least, organically. It doesn’t
necessarily mean her thought processes are correspondingly slower,
although, of course, they must be slbwer than ours.”

Men had long known that in sub-zero temperatures life pro-
cesses were incredibly sluggish. How the Plutonians and ourselves
were ever to get mentally in step was another problem, but obviously
the initiative rested with us, the quicker-witted. If only a Plutonian
could be kept alive under laboratory conditions on Earth, a way
could surely be found.

Plutonian speech must be so slow as to be unintelligible to a
human ear, each syllable perhaps minutes long. But if it were tape-
recorded, and the playback speeded up to suit the comprehension of
our lingual experts, and if their efforts at response were accordingly
slowed down . . . there remained possibilities.

Phillips was currently fiddling with the blood-sampler. It was
like an outsize hypodermic syringe swivelling freely on a bearing
set in the clearplast. He was directing the needle-sharp point at
Pocahontas’ upper arm. An inch from where he was probing, on
the white flesh, was a yellowish blob, like pus.

I indicated it. “What’s that?”

Phillips replied irritably: “ A pinprick — I missed the main vein.
It doesn’t follow because her pulse is in the normal place her whole
artery system corresponds to ours. Damn it, give me a chance — I
haven’t even located her heart yet.”

“ Her blood is yellow?” asked the Captain, eyebrows raised.

“ What colour did you e.xpect it to be — blue?” snapped Phillips,
still having trouble manipulating the sampler.

Tactfully, the skipper let it pass. In silence Phillips found his
mark, and drew off a tubcful of amber fluid — apparently it turned
bright yellow only after congealment. He set it aside, then hauled
himself across to the atmospheric tank, carrying a flask with a screw
top. Just where the pipe left the tank for the container, there was

NEBULA

a manually-controlled valve with an open outlet. Phillips screwed
the flask into the outlet and turned the valve’s handwheel.

The flask filled with the foggy atmosphere of Pluto. Phillips
shut off the valve, stoppering the flask adroidy, and said: “ These
two samples will keep me busy for a bit. I’ll see you later. Keep
an eye on Pocahontas.”

“ Right,” said Shervington. Phillips retired to his “ stinks
corner ” up above. If he could successfully analyse the atmosphere,
I would radio the formula to the Institute and they’d synthesize
volumes of it in readiness for Pocahontas’s arrival. He didn’t expect
to get far with tire blood, working alone under no-gravity condi-
tions, but he hoped at least to make a start in understanding
Plutonian metabohsm. A team^ could carry on from there, much
faster, on Earth.

Six weeks without sustenance could kill a human. But that
was the equivalent of only one day for a Plutonian. Perhaps in less
than another Plutonian day, some satisfactory food could be pre-
pared.

“Nevertheless,” said Captain Shervington, after voicing this,
“ kidnapping a girl and starving her for two days is a bit rough. I
hope we learn enough Plutonian to say we’re sorry. Just her bad
luck she happened to be out for a walk on her own when we landed.”

“ Good luck for us,” I said. “ The Institute wanted a female
preferably, to get a fuller idea of the reproductive system.”

“ Maybe she just lays eggs, Graham.”

“ Maybe. You know, until I saw that yellow blood ...” I
trailed off.

The skipper looked at me quizzically. “ You thought she
wasn’t so very different from us? You fancied, perhaps, some kind
of Edgar Rice Burroughs romantic affair with her if she could be
stepped up to our tempo?”

I grinned, and veered away. “ I’d better test the radio link
again.”

He grinned after me. The link was all right: the usual mixture
of words, crackles, and repeat requests. I came back later, and we
spent some time just watching the figure in the container. Poca-
hontas gradually changed her position to a more reposeful one,
though her hands were beginning to clench. Her eyes became half
closed and she seemed nearly asleep.

“ Her old man’s going to wonder what the devil’s happened to
her,” commented Shervington, and yawned. I yawned, too. I was
beginning to feel pretty tired and surmised it was the unwinding

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

after the peak of nervous tension. I rubbed my eyes: they were
smarting a bit.

“ I think ” began Shervington, relaxedly, then broke sud-

denly into a fit of coughing.

“ Got a silly tickle in my throat,” he said, hoarsely, afterwards.

I felt a similar irritation, began to cough, and my eyes streamed
tears.

“ Something’s got into the atmosphere here,” said the skipper,
looking around. Then: “ Look at that valve! The damn fool!”

I looked at the valve on the tank of Plutonian atmosphere. It
looked vaguely swimmy and it wasn’t just because of my watering
eyes: there was a faint mist hovering round the thing. The skipper
cursed and dived at it, holding his nose. He spun the handwheel
a turn or two and blundered back.

I felt a sort of heat prickle on my face, which might have been
the sweat of fright or the touch of the escaped acid gas.

Phillips drifted down the ladder, carrying a notebook. “ I’ve
got this far, anyway. Shove it through the ether, Graham. . . .
What’s that queer smell in here?”

The skipper controlled his anger. “ You didn’t shut that valve
properly. Some of the poisonous stuff leaked out.”

Phillips stared at the valve. “ I did shut it — tight.”

Shervington shrugged and said nothing. I said: “ Is that the
atmospheric formula, Phil — you analysed it all right?”

“ Eh? Oh, yes. It’s deadly stuff. Can’t understand how
Pocahontas can flourish in it. A real lungful of it would kill any
man — unpleasantly. Just this page, Graham — get it right.”

I took the notebook to my signals niche on the upper deck. I
looked at the page of chemical symbols and knew it would be a
headache to “ get it right ” via the current ion-blasted reception. I
felt even more tired.

However, I was spared that particular headache. The moment
I pressed the mike button, the set went dead. No transmission, no
reception. Obviously no power. I examined the leads from the
power unit: they were in order. I removed the top of the set,
peered into the ordered multitude of transistors. Down below them,
in a near-inaccessible corner, a screw terminal had somehow worked
loose and the end of the relevant power lead had become discon-
nected and drifted away.

I said something violent and idiotic, and hunted out a long,
thin screwdriver. It had the tough razor edge necessary to deal
with that slotted terminal. I fished again in the toolchest, and then:

NEBULA

“ Graham!” A double-voiced shout, urgent with alarm, came from
below. I dropped everything and thrust myself down the rungs,
clumsily, because my muscles seemed to have lost strength. The
tang of the acid gas hit me like smelling salts. Shervington and
Phillips were both fiercely gripping the handwheel of the valve
which was obviously leaking again.

“ Get the big wrench,” panted the skipper, red-faced with
strain.

I got it. He and Phillips thrust it betvi'een the handwheel
spokes and jammed the head under a wall bracket.

“ That’ll hold it,” said Shervington, jerkily.

“ What on earth’s going on?” I asked.

The skipper mopped his forehead. “We’ve caught a Tartar.
Pocahontas is trying m kill us, ‘that’s all.”

“ What?” I stared at him, then at Pocahontas. Her eyes were
quite closed now; so also were her hands, clenched into little fists.

Phillips said strainedly but with eyes alive with interest: “It
must be psycho-kinesis — what else? The handwheel can’t be turn-
ing itself — there’s no reason why it should: no vibration or anythmg.
It undoes itself slowly but with tremendous power. It took two of
us all our time to shut the valve again and keep it that way.”

“ It’s taken a lot out of me,” said die skipper. “ I feel as weak
as hell.”

“ So do I,” said Phillips.

“ And I,” I said. “ And I haven’t been exerting myself. Do
you think she could be tapping our strength in some peculiar way?”

The skipper shrugged and said: “ Frankly, I don’t know what
to think.”

Phillips said: “ I believe you’re right, Graham. In some
mediumistic way she’s drawing off some of our energy and using it
against us. Judging from her physique, unaided she wouldn’t be
able to turn that wheel against the resistance of any one of us.”

“ I’ve been in some peculiar situations in my time,” said the
skipper, “ but nothing to match this. Seems we’ve to fight our-
selves in order to stop ourselves from killing ourselves. Put the
know-alls at the Institute in the picture, Graham — perhaps they can
come up with a few helpful suggestions: they talk as if they know
all the answers.”

“ The radio is out of order, pro tem.” I told Shervington why.

“Bad maintenance,” he grunted.

“Or psychorkinesis,” I joked, with a feeble grin, which
became feebler when I and the others suddenly realised it mght

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

be no joke, at that.

“ Get it fixed, anyhow,” said Captain Shervington.

i started to go, then impelled myself to the handwheel and
hammered with my fist at the wrench. I’d spotted that it was being
slowly withdrawn by an invisible hand. The other two had to help
me before we could force it back in place.

Breathing heavily, the skipper said: This is becoming impos-
sible. This damn valve’s got to be watched every minute. How the
devil are we ever going to get any sleep? How can anyone go to
sleep, anyway, knowing that someone’s trying to flood the ship with
poison gas? Phillips, can’t you do something to make her uncon-
scious? Drug her or something?”

Phillips scratched his head. “From the look of her she might
be unconscious right now — maybe only asleep, maybe in a state of
trance. Psycho-kinesis is subconscious force. She mightn’t even be
aware of what her mind is doing. It may be just the natural sense of
self-preservation functioning automatically.”

“ Nonsense!” said Shervington, emphatically. “ She’s not
merely trying to save herself — she’s deliberately trying to murder
us.”

“ Let’s be fair,” I said. “ She didn’t ask to be snatched away
from her home, her people, her planet, never to see them again,
condemned probably to die — for I think the odds are against our
being able to keep her alive for very long.”

Nobody had an opportunity to comment on that view. For,
at that m.oment, the side jets of the ship began firing, swinging her
round so that the sudden radial force pressed us tightly against one
wall. Then the balancing jets steadied her and we were coasting along
tail-first.

“ Who the ” began the skipper, and then the main drive

jets began blasting, decelerating Icarus, making the ceiling our floor
and pinning us to it under several g’s. The ship gradually lost
impetus. Presently, we were able to crawl, painfully and with
swimming senses, towards the upper deck — which seemed like the
lower deck at first, but became lessenmgly so — and towards the
control console.

Before we could reach it, the deceleration was completed and
acceleration in' the reverse direction had begun. The upper deck
was again “ above ” us, and the ship was hurtling nose-foremost
back towards Pluto.

When we got to the console, we could do nothing effective to
change the situation. We had six hands between us, and still

NEBULA

couldn’t regain control of the ship. Admittedly, we had been
weakened and were slow and our brains were spinning, and only
the captain was an expert on the console. But even if we had been
properly fit, defeat would have been difficult to avoid when switches,
levers, and stud buttons wouldn’t retain their position for more than
two seconds after we’d taken our fingers off them.

A mind employing many streamers of force, the captain’s own
technical know-how, and our stolen strength, brushed our combined
residual effort aside.

The tables had been turned. We were now the kidnapped,
Pluto-bound.

We gave up and looked at each other’s white faces.

“I’ll pump her full of morphia,” said Phillips, unsteadily.

“It’s too late for experiments,” said Shervington, rather shrill
with nerve-strain. “This P.K. effect seems to be working at the
speed of thought, and thought works a hell of a sight faster than
organic processes. The morphia may take days to do its job — that’s
if it affects her at all. By then we’ll all be dead. We must kill her
first.”

“ No!” I exclaimed, shocked.

“ By heaven, no!” exclaimed Phillips. “ The Institute ”

“ Blast the Institute! Their skins arc safe.”

“ She’s my responsibility,” said Phillips, excitedly. “ I want a
living specimen ”

“ Face the facts, you fool!” shouted the skipper. “ We’re not
taking her back now — she’s taking us back. To our deaths. It’s
her life or ours.”

Phillips was leaning with his back against my signals desk. His
knees were bent slightly under the steady acceleration. He clasped
his head and muttered distractedly; “ Give me time.”

But his fate allowed him no time. Concurrently with the
skipper’s gasp of exasperation, Phillips also gasped. And with mouth
and eyes wide open, he pitched forward, face down on the deck.
The handle of my long thin screwdriver protruded from under his
left shoulder-blade. The rest of the tool had skewered his heart.

As we gazed in horror, the screwdriver slowly began to pull
itself from the wound. Shervington and I scrambled madly to the
lower deck. As we reached it, the main drive cut out and free fall
returned to confuse us further.

I saw the wrench disengage itself from the handwheel and
float loosely around. The handwheel resumed its slow, inexorable
unwinding. I fought my way to it and clung to it, but my feet failed

THE UHDiSCOVERED COUNTRY

to find purchase and the wheel began to turn me with it.

The skipper had made for the lever operating the door of
Lock Two. Surprisingly meeting no opposition, he yanked it over.
The circular door at the end of the container swung open and the
Plutonian atmosphere, under pressure, squirted out into the vacuum
of space, carrying the drifting, weighdess alien girl with it. Feet
first, the beautiful body passed from our sight, and Shervington
closed the door behind it.

The handwheel began to slow in its turning until at last I could
stop it. No part of Phillips’ strength could be used against me, and
the girl must be using her own strength to fight asphyxiadon.

Shervington hung on to his lever, afraid that she might try to
force the door of Lock Two open again. But she made no measure-
able attempt. Possibly she knew, drifting and dying in space,
that even if the door were re-opened, there could be no way back
for her.

My grip on the handwheel was like having my finger on
her pulse. I could feel the opposition gradually weakening. It must
have taken her over ten minutes to die, for it was that long before I
forced the wheel to a complete standstill.

The last few minutes were pure terror, for the bloodstained
screwdriver came floating slowly down from the upper deck. It hung
before my eyes like Lady Macbeth’s vision of the dagger. Then
it levelled itself and came at me, point foremost.

Luckily, it came so slowly that I was able to grasp the sticky
and horrible thing and hold it off till Shervington came to my aid.

If the Plutonian girl hadn’t divided her ebbing streng.h, I might
easily have shared the fate of Phillips. I still have nightmares about
that little predicament.

I said, shakily; “ Thanks, skipper. . . . Objection withdrawn.
You were perfectly right to kiU her.”

He made no reply, and directly it was clear that Pocahontas was
dead he went to the upper deck. I followed reluctantly.

Poor Phillips was drifting a few inches above the floor. Between
us we strapped his body to his bunk. Later he would have to leave
us via Lock Two: there was no option.

Then Shervington stared expressionlessly through a port at the
shadowy bulk of Pluto, to which we were still coasting.

I heard him mutter: “ The undiscovered country. ... So it will
remain. Perhaps for ever.”

He turned Icarus about, and we defied augury and returned.

WiLLlAM F. TEHPLE

KENNETH BULMER

I Wisdom of the
m Gods

Earthly civilisation was tottering on the brink of disaster. Could
it, even yet, survive the impact of that deadly alien information?

Illustrations by Kenneth Barr

SYNOPSIS OF FIRST THREE PARTS

Two hundred and fifty million years ago — give or take ten mil-
lion — a spaceship crashed upon Earth. She contained a Galactic
Intelligencer, an encyclopcedia of galactic civilisation’s knowledge.
Over the years the spaceship vanished and the encyclopcedia became
entombed in coal. Today, the Ancient Railways Preservation

NEBULA

Society, headed by Lord Ashley (known as Jeffers) and Beagle, a
nuclear physicist, and Rodney Winthrop, a mathematician, run a
small railway from the village of Nether Ambleton. Walter Colborne,
a historian, is the stoker of the engine, the Saucy Sal. Colborne’ s
sister, June, is seriously ill with cancer and all surgery has failed.

Colborne inadvertently throws the encyclopcedia on the Saucy
Sal’s fire. In the explosion, lines of mental force radiate and implant
scattered items of alien information in the minds of people on the
train and in the surrounding countryside.

Nether Ambleton becomes cut off and paratroopers stand guard.
Sir William, head of Nuclear Intelligence Department Five, and his
chief agent, John Roland, together with Colonel Starkie of the mili-
tary, and Superintendent Brown, of Scotland Yard set up an Opera-
tions Room over the Golden Lion and attempt to track down all
people on the train in an attempt to collate the information they
received. Sally Picton, a local reporter, was on the train. Neither
Lord Ashley nor Beagle received any alien information.

Colborne, who received a vast amount of alien knowledge, is
appalled at the prospect of answering questions for the rest of his
life. When a boy makes a deadly violet beamed gun from a toy and
kills his friends and wrecks a street of houses, Colborne decides he
cannot give up the information in his mind. He is sent to hospital
for a check up and cm the way back his ambulance is shot at by a
.22 rifle from the woods.

An American, Hackensack, received from the encyclopedia
religious information and declares that he sees in letters of fire that
the world must wait for the gods from the sky.

Brigadier Graham has received the first part of a formula for a
weapon which he says will make cobalt bcnnbs look like Christmas
crackers. Colborne has the rest of this information but refuses to
divulge it. He is convinced that more harm will come to the world
from this alien knowledge than man himself can invent. Pressure
is brought to bear on him in a friendly way by his associates in the
Railway Society, but without success. Later, he goes to see Sally in
her lodgings. A man tries to intercept him, but Sally sees them and
raises the alarm, and soldiers drive the man off.

Then Colborne realises that he has the plans for a machine
that is a defence against the violet beam weapon made by the boy
but if he reveals this, then, thrmigh the Pandorofs Box Effect, the
rest of his knowledge will be dragged out, including the rdtimate
weapon partly described by Brigadier Graham.

He manages to cut a tape with the defence machine formula.

WISDOM OF THE GODS

disguising his voice. This arouses his friends’ suspicions; but they
are still not certain that Colbome has recalled his alien knowledge.

When the encyclopcedia exploded a group of girls on horseback
had been near; now proof comes that there is a gang hiding out in
the woods between the village and Polder, where a nuclear power
station is being built. A mock attack is staged, and Colbome,
frightened for the well-being of Sally who has disappeared, mns to
the woods where he was fired ast. A girl on horseback takes him —
with a .22 rifle in his back — to the gang’s camp. Colbome realises
that they have been impregnated with alien information and believe
themselves to be aliens stranded on Earth.

Sally is also a prisoner with him. Eventually Colborne is
brought before a woman whom he cannot see in the dark-
ness outside her tent and she tells him that she has received informa-
tion that was provided for aliens stranded upon a planet. She has
the knowledge to take over a civilisation on a par with that of
Earth’s, and Colborne knows that she can do this. She aims to set
herself up as the first woman dictator of all time. From Colborne
she demands the rest of the knowledge she needs to make her task
easier.

Colbome refuses to assist the woman — who calls herself ma’am
— in her scheme to conquer the world. He fully understands that
with the alien knowledge in her possession she can do what she
wants; but he will have nothing to do with it. Ma’am is very insis-
tent that he join her, and when he refuses, threatens to torture Sally
Picton.

Colbome decides that if he has not given up the secrets of the
ultimate weapon to his friends, he cannot tell this woman secrets
that will make her taking-over of the Earth easy. Ma’am’s lieutenant
is told to take Colbome into the tent where Betty, ma’am’s chief
aide, will torture Sally until Colborne agrees to help.

Colbome says: “ Go on. Flay her alive! I won’t talk!”

CHAPTER XVII

That shocked tableau held in the glowing interior of the tent,
with the lamp’s rays falhng on the whip in Betty’s hands, on Adkin’s
grimy shirt, on the tortured, blood-stained hanging thing dangling
in its bonds from the tent pole. Panting, barely able to speak, filled
with sick revulsion, Colborne said again: “ Go on, whip her! I
won’t talk.”

The crooning groaning stopped. It stopped on a choking

NEBULA

gurgle. The silence intensified that feeling of staginess, of this
moment being a segment cut out of time, to stay exactly the same
until the end of tfie Universe.

Then, in a shocked voice of utter incredulity, Betty said:

“ You mean you won’t — but you can’t ! This is the girl you love !
You can’t stand by and see her tortured!”

“ I thought you v/as a man,” Adkins said, spitting.

Colborne said nothing. He stood with his brooding eyes fixed
on Sally’s white and blood-stained back.

Betty shifted the whip in her hands. Then, half-heartedly, she
lifted it. She looked across at Adkins, a look of appeal, of help-
lessness, a look that drew from Adkins only a muttered growl and
a jerk at Colborne’s bound hands.

“ I’m going to take the skin off her back,” Betty said, licking her
lips. The quirt gleamed in the light, smooth brown leather rolled
into a weapon of torture that could rip the skin from Sally’s back
in long bloody strips. Betty drew her arm back. Colborne pressed
his lips together.

Sally spoke. In a voice that whispered huskily, as though speak-
ing through a throat full of pain, she said : “ Walter. Please. No
more. Don’t let her hit me again. I can’t stand it.” She swallowed
noisily, and her shoulders moved awkwardly, the muscles rippling
under the skin of her arms, twisted upwards as they were. “ Please,
Walter. Tell ma’am what she wants to know.”

Colborne said: “Well, Betty? What are you waiting for?
Ma’am told you to whip Miss Picton until I talked. I’m not talk-
ing. Why don’t you whip her?”

Again that breathless hush of unreality swept back. One
moment they had all been acting under the prod of angry and over-
powering emotions; the next they were caught in a web of play-
acting. Colborne thought he was right; but the chance was a ter-
rible gamble, the chance that he was wrong.

He had to urge this thing to its conclusion. He said, huskily:
“ Don’t stand there, Betty! If ma’am has told you to whip Miss
Picton — then why don’t you do as she says?”

Adkins gave him an ungentle shove. “ Swine!” Adkins said.
“Why don’t you speak up?”

Sally had swung in her bonds so that now she hung with her
back to Colborne. He stared unflinching. She moved her
auburn-haired head sluggishly. “ Please, for God’s sake, Walter.
Tell them! Tell them!”

Colborne laughed. A high, cackling, almost insane laugh. He

WISDOM OF THE GODS

trod back on Adkins and felt the man’s instep crunch under his heel.

“ It’s no good,” he said. “ You’ll have to whip her until she’s a
carcase. Sorry.”

The voice of ma’am sounded; hard, imperious, full of frustra-
tion and yet carrying that steely ring of final determination and
implacable intention. “ It’s useless. Betty, he knows. Well, don’t
just stand there! He’s found out, at last.”

Betty dropped the whip. She gave a jerky step forward. Adkins
took the opportunity to repay Colborne’s stamp, with interest.
Colborne said : “ Ow ! ”

Ma’am said : “ Well, get on with it, Betty. Cut me down.”

Under Colborne’s mocking stare, Betty took up a knife and cut
through Sally’s bonds. Sally turned ,to face Colborne as soon as she
was cut free. She massaged her wrists. Her dress still hung in
tatters around her waist.

“ Well, Walter. So you’d let me be whipped to shreds just so
you could keep your secrets to yourself?”

“ Don’t fool yourself, Sally.” Ever since Colborne had sensed
this impersonation, his emotions had been chaotic. He still couldn’t
reconcile his half-aware feelings towards Sally Picton with his
instinctive antagonism towards the megalomaniac ma’am. He both
hated and loved her. He knew, quite simply and sincerely, he knew,
that this would-be dictator ma’am was nothing like the real Sally.
Sally had had her brains addled by the explosion. Poor kid — she’d
really been on the sticky end.

“ I thought you liked me, Walter?”

“ I — liked Sally Picton. I knew you wouldn’t let yourself be
whipped.” He smiled nastily. “ And you can wipe all tliat lipstick
off your back now. Blood runs, you know. And the whip clogs
with blood, too. Whipping a person is a disgusting business; it’s
nothing like the lady like scene you presented to me.” His stare
was rude, challenging. “ And you can cover yourself up. You might
catch a chill in this night air.”

She snatched up a windcheater, angrily slung it about her
shoulders. “ Damn you, Walter ! If you knO'W so much about
whipping, then we’ll have the disgusting scene — ^with you as the
principal actor. Adkins!”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Lash him up. Tight.”

Adkins complied with relish. Strung up to the tent-pole,
Coibome felt his shirt ripned down the back. The night air cooled,
the feverish chill on his skin. He shivered.

NEBULA

“ Go on, Walter. Shake in your shoes all you like. This time,
there’s no saving you.”

He struggled to keep his voice composed. “ I’m surprised at
your methods, Sally. I would have thought that, thinking you know
how I feel about you, you would have suggested we went into the
dictator business in harness. I’d have probably been a sucker for
that — with you.”

She mocked him with her laugh. “Not a chance! I saw the
way you reacted when Lord Ashley and the others tried to get the
information from you. Your damn principles and your stinking
wishy-washy ideas of what is right and wrong — ^hell, Walter, you’re
as proud as a church deacon.”

“ You couldn’t be sure.”

“ I know you, Walter. I knew just what your reaction would
have been.” She moved towards him. “ All right. I want that
infonnation and I’m willing to do anything to get it. I’ll offer you
a partnership. You and me, Walter, together.” Her tones shar-
pened and her voice rose. “ You and me, together, to rule the
world! And we can do it. Easily! With the knowledge we have,
pooled, no-one can stop us. All the guns and tanks in the world
couldn’t stop us.”

“ You’re right. Brute force couldn’t.”

“ So you’ll come in? You’ll give me what I want to know —
you’ll team up with me.” Her quick, impassioned flow of words
faltered. “ But, of course, you won’t, will you? I know that. I
told you, before. You’d rather be cut to pieces by a whip than lose a
single shred of your own estimation of yourself. Well, Walter, it’s
shreds of your skin or shreds of your character. I don’t mind which
it is ”

“ You didn’t even wait to see if I’d join you.”

She faced him, reached out and, twitching his head to face her,
and staring deep into his eyes, said: “Well? Go on, then. Tell
me. Will you?”

Colborne hated pain. He feared it and loathed it. He almost
dreaded it in others as much as he did for himself. He knew that
he was a coward. He guessed that he wouldn’t stand much from the
whip wielded by the heavy and powerful Betty. But he couldn’t
go down without trying, without seeing just how far his principles
would sustain his courage. And, anyway, he might faint before
they’d got anything out of him.

“ Well?” Sally said again, her soft lips firmed into a hard
merciless line. “Will you?”

WISDOM OF THE GODS

“No.”

“ Ah.” She drew a deep breath and then released his head,
pushing his face away. Colborne heard her say, in a tone of voice
devoid of emotion: “ Start, Betty.”

He tensed up. He couldn’t help the premonitory tightening of
his muscles, the wincing away and the horrible gulf opening in his
stomach.

He must have fallen backwards into a vat of molten metal. At
the same time as he realised he no longer had a backbone, the top of
his head came off. From that gulf of nothing in the centre tendrils
of flame spread out over his entire body. His skin became so
sensitive that he knew he could tell if an eyelid blinked within a foot
by mere air currents alone.. He did^t know if he was screaming or
not. His mouth was open. He sucked in a great whooping draught
of air. The glowing interior of the tent came back into focus. He
felt sweat starting out over his face. He suddenly had a back again
and it throbbed and stung and pounded in every nerve with unbear-
able sensation. The top of his head descended and fitted his face —
and then the whole thing happened again. Only this time it was
twice as bad.

He tried to speak. He tried to get the obstinate words through
his mouth. He wanted to cry out: “ Stop! Stop! I’ll talk! I’ll tell
you anything. Only for God’s sake, stop!” But, unaccountably,
he couldn’t make his mouth and tongue and vocal chords obey his
will. He swallowed, convulsively, and then the third stroke fell.

He lost interest in his surroundings after that. He had time,
just before his tired mind shd beneath a billow of darkness, to drink,
sardonically, that he hadn’t taken much punishment. But that
wasn’t the important thing. Weakened by fatigue and hunger as he
had been, he had had no reserves of strength to call upon. The
important thing was that, so far, he hadn’t told these people what
they wanted to know. When he awoke to bleary consciousness, it
didn’t seem of great significance that he couldn’t bring to mind just
what it was that they were after.

He had heard stories of men being tortured for information.
There was a point beyond which nothing anyone could do to the
hulks which remained could mean anything. Of course, he hadn’t
been anywhere near that. That came after long periods of intensive
interrogation. But he knew, too, that a man could get into the habit
of saying: “ No.” Even after he desperately wanted to say: “ Yes.”
But this was fantasy he was building in his sick mind. He had been .

NEBULA

struck — how many times — four, five, half-a-dozen blows? — the
thing hadn’t really begun yet.

He opened his eyes and saw that it was daylight. He had been
moved from the tent and lay in the open, on grass that still sparkled
with silver dew. Trees overhead made a lacy pattern against blue
skies and somewhere, hatefully, a bird sang. A shadow fell across
his face.

“ Wake up, hero.”

The toe of Adkins’ boot prodded his side.

“ You fainted. And then I guess you must have gone off to
sleep. Which was a very good thing, see. Now you’re all freshened
up, you can be asked to answer certain questions.” Adkins laughed.
“ Understand?”

Colborne understood well enough. They gave him breakfast,
with a dire prediction that he’d sick it all up within the hour. He
drank water until he felt like a distended balloon. Then the whole
grisly business started over again.

Colborne’s back ached as though he’d been flogged — well,
he had, hadn’t he? Each movement brought a twinge. Adkins
laughed. Sally — or ma’am, as he thought he’d better think of this
demented woman — was conspicuous by her absence. He felt a vast
pity for Sally. He could clearly envisage Sally as a distinct entity, a
person apart from ma’am. For ma’am he had a pity, a revulsion, a
feeling for something unclean. All of which didn’t help him much
when he was to be flogged until he gave her the rest of the know-
ledge she needed to make her conquest of the world a fact. And he
knew with absolute certainty that he would give it to her. He
couldn’t take any more of the sort of punishment he had endured
last night.

They strung him up to a tree. Betty, fresh and rosy in the
early light, appeared, swinging her quirt negligently against her
leather clad leg. Colborne shut his eyes.

He heard ma’am’s voice in the distance, coming nearer. She
sounded anxious. Intrigued, Colborne turned his head and opened
his eyes.

A man Colborne had seen before was walldng with ma’am.
He was big and tough, with the craggy face of the out-of-doorsman.
He had run a little too fat, and his walk was heavy and assured. He
seemed to have the habit of putting his hands in his vest armholes —
he wore no coat — and twiddling his thumbs. Colborne didn’t like
tiie look of him.

“ Adkins,” ma’am said sharply. “ Get everything packed up.

WISDOM OF THE GODS

We’re moving. The damned soldiers are getting too nosey. We’re
breaking out of the ring. Keep your eye on Colborne.” She looked
grey and drawn in the morning light.

“ All right,” Adkins said. Then added : “ Ma’am.”

“ I know all this area like my own garden. We’ll break out
near Polder. They won’t expect that.”

“ They know we’re here, then?”

“Yes. Macnaughten, here, has all the news. Come on, step
lively.”

The camp began to break up. Yes, Colborne thought, Sally
would know this part of the country. She had been born and
brought up here. She could keep out of the way of Colonel Starkie’s
soldiers easily. He stood apathetically. Iris hands bound in front of
him, watching.

There seemed little anyone could do, now, to stop ma’am from
taking over. The devil of it was, Colborne knew she could do it
quite easily without his information. He knew how to influence the
masses — she had the control over individuals. He could see no
future at all. No future for him, or for the country.

At that moment, with the camp in a turmoil, the sound of an
aeroplane floated down to them from the bright morning sky.
Everyone looked up.

A four-engined transport droned over the trees. Black blobs
dropped from it. White and coloured parachutes opened like puffs
of smoke. Clumps of parachutes supported heavy equipment. The
military were moving in. The soldiers had struck first.

CHAPTER XVIII

A helicopter scudded in low over the trees, dipped, hanging like
some nightmarish bat, and then swooped to a landing behind a row
of blackthorn hedged trees. Another followed. Around Colborne
the confusion was rapidly arranging itself into ordered activity as
the girls of the riding school and the odd men caught up in this
wild scheme packed their belongings onto horses and disappeared in
groups into the wood. They worked as though ma’am had trained
them for years instead of for the few days they had been at large.
That showed the power of the knowledge that had blasted from the
alien encyclopaedia.

“ Come on. Waiter,” ma’am said briskly. “ Start walking.”

Obediently, Colborne preceded her and the large and quiet

NEBULA

Macnaughten. Adkins had gone off, giving crisp orders and sending
the riders scattering ahead, bending to avoid low-hanging boughs.
Noises in the woods scaled down to the familiar leafy rustle and
scutter of tiny things.

Walking ahead of the others, Colborne reflected on his chances
of escaping. There had been not the slightest possibility of that up
to now. But now, with the dramatic arrival of the paratroopers, his
chance had come. He must make a break for it inside the next
fifteen minutes. Later on ma’am would be well clear.

Thinking of escape reminded him of Lord Ashley and Beagle
and Winthrop and the Saucy Sal. He thought of the lovingly tended
steam engine, her bright parts winking in the sun and her great
driving wheels seeming ready to spring into motion at the flick of a
finger. He sighed, and tripped' over a tree root. Cussing, he
staggered back onto his feet, awkwardly with his hands bound, and
glared round at ma’am.

“ Don’t make so much noise, oaf!” she said fiercely. “ Those
damned soldiers must be hereabouts.”

I Colborne perked up. “If you’d untie my hands I’d be able to
get along better.”

Macnaughten said heavily : “ Not on your life.”

Ma’am said with acerbity : “ I give the orders around here,
Macnaughten. He stays bound. And both of you keep quiet.”
She looked ahead into the green dusk of the woods. “ There’s a
dry ditch running along there. We’ll go dovm it as far as the stile.
I That should take us clear.”

The ditch rustled and shivered with plants and animals as they
dropped into it. At this time of the year it was dry, as ma’am had
said, and there was no great accumulation of dead leaves to betray
their presence by crackling. The main difficulty was in forcing a
way through the abundant greenery at all. But it did afford good
cover. Darting a glance upwardsj Colborne saw that they had
emerged from the woods — a single line of trees paralleled the ditch —
and they were making their way between open fields.

Now was his chance.

I He had long since given up any idea of making a run for it.

Macnaughten would be on him in a trice. But he could draw
I attention to himself.

And then an odd thought occurred to him. What had the
Galactic Intelligencer to say on this problem? Quite deliberately,
1 he posed the question. Then a little grimace quirked his lips.
1 Nothing. No answer to how to get away hung in letters of fire

WISDOM OF THE GODS

against the screen of his brain. But he was willing to take a bet
that the encyclopaedia had contained that information. Either some-
one else knew that, or it had been whiffed into the eternal nothing-
ness along with the bulk of the encyclopaedia’s information.

He had to carry through his own plan. He was creeping along
in front of the others. He staggered to his feet and ran clumsily
forward, tripping and stumbling over the green mat. He shouted.
Loudly. He strained his lungs and went red in the face, his neck
muscles cording, his whole body convulsed with the effort.

Standing out darkly against the brightness of a young cornfield,
figures in green and brown camouflage moved towards him from
the middle distance. In the brief interval between beginning to shout
and the moment when he ceased to shout — abrupdy — he saw at
least four soldiers running. He waved his bound arms before his
face. They must have seen him! This was the turning of the
tables

And then a tree fell on his head and he went out like a puff of
thistledown in a gale.

His awakening this time was less pleasant. His back and head
had joined forces to send wave after wave of agony coursing through
him. He lay for a time with eyes shut, existing merely in a bed of
pain, gradually absorbing the meaning of the sounds he could hear
about him.

If dris sort of thing went on much longer, he’d be flattened one
time and wouldn’t recover. His body, out of training and only just
beginning to toughen up with the summer occupations, couldn’t take
unlimited punishment. Ruminating on that, he knew it couldn’t
take much more.

He lay, listening to the bustle around him. From the sharp-
ness of footfalls, he guessed he was in a room. He did not have the
courage to open his eyes. He didn’t want to let anyone know he
was conscious; he wished to delay for as long as possible his return
to the ugly world of reality.

There was, of course, no possibility that he had escaped. He
was enough of a realist to face up to that. Macnaughten must have
sprung on him from the rear and clouted him over the head with, as
no doubt the police would phrase it, a blunt instrument. But he had
hoped the soldiers would get to him in time. This was another mark
to ma’am’s efficiency and knowledge. She’d extricated her nomad
group from the perimeter, got them out by Polder way, probably,
and was now — well, where were they?

Cautiously, Colbome opened one eye. He was looking directly

NEBULA

at a rectangle of lightness. Redness overcast the sky, and there was a
hint of chill in the air. Evening, then. A girl sat near the door,
her chair tipped back. Across her knees rested a rifle. Apart from
that, and the bare, austere look of the place, there was only a poster
on the distempered wall to guide Colborne. The poster said: DOG
LICENCES. The rest was a blur of overinked print.

So he was in a police station.

Some time later the imphcations of that were borne in on him.
He stirred, gripped by astonishment. A police station! Then —
then ma’am must have opened her campaign!

Police stations of this austerely offlcial type did not crop up
with remarkable frequency in the country. The local village const-
able lived in a cottage that doubled as the station. They must be in a
town, a town of some size. Bfeyond Polder way? He tried to
remember what towns lay in that direction. Vaguely, he recalled
driving through a twisty-main road with a huddle of shops, a church
and three or four pu’os — what was it called? Larkswood? Lark-
spur? Something hke that. It didn’t matter. What was important
was that ma’am must feel herself strong enough to begin her task of

taking over. A small beginning, a flowering . He knew from the

alien information implanted in his brain what would follow from
that. She could take over the Vv'hole country before it had realised
what had struck it. And then the world.

After that, with what she felt about the possibilities of future
science and if someone had received from the encyclopaedia details of
the construction of a spaceship, she would go on to an attempt on
the stars.

And who was there to say her nay?

“ Come on, slob, wake up.” A shoe connected ungently with
his ribs. Adkins had arrived. Colborne was hustled through the
town. People moved through the streets in an apparently normal
way; shops were open, business was being conducted. Biit he wasn’t
fooled. That Adkins, striding along with a rifle under his arm and
a man with bonds on his wrists thrust before him, attracted little
attention, indicated more pointedly than anything else that the whole
viewpoint of the town had changed. Moral values had altered direc-
tion.

Adkins wore an armband of some blue nylon material, and
Colborne saw others, men and women, with this badge of the new
order. Some things, then, followed a set pattern.

Ma’am was brusque tyith him. “ Haven’t time to bother about
you now, Walter. This is only the earliest stage of my plafi. If the

WISDOM OF THE GODS

military ran me out of Nether Ambleton area, then, \vith or without
your immediate help, I must make a new base. Larksthorn will do
for a start. As scon as we have about a twenty miles radius under
control. I’ll come back to you for the next steps.” She smiled
frostily at him. “Just brood on it, Walter. Nothing is going to
stop me. Remember that. Face it. You’ll talk, when I want you
to. Now you can go back and be lodged in a cell.”

Back in the cell, this time with the door closed, and locked —
iron bars did not feature in the country town’s gaol planning —
Colborne sat on the edge of a wooden chair and picked up the papers
that had been tossed in. He guessed that ma’am had given him the
news so that he should not be in any doubts that the rest of the
country was ignorant of what was going on here. But only one item
had the power to interest him.

Very briefly, a small squib said that Mister Hackensack, the
industrialist turned prophet, had renounced all his teachings. He
had, the paper said, been unable to account for his seizure by dreams
and visions. He had apologised profusely, apparently, and managed
to get off with a stiff wigging from whatever American court of
justice^ had had him hauled up before it. Questioned on his ‘apocalyp-
tic stroke from on high’, he had said, testily, by all accounts, that it
must have been something those Limeys fed him at London airport
disagreeing with his Middle Western ulcers.

Colborne sat back on the hard wooden chair and threw the
papers in a fluttering white cloud above his head. They looked
like the doves of peace to him. His face wore an imbecile look of
happiness and joyful stupefaction. He shook his head from side to
side, like a runaway metronome, quite unable to think, speak or
laugh.

He sat, his wits slowly coming back, for some time. He was
aroused to full awareness by a girl bringing food. It seemed that
starvation and misery had no part in ma’am’s plans to break him
down. Colborne ate with relish. He sat back afterwards, con-
sidering.

It all boiled down to a simple one-word formula.

Wait.

Now he needn’t bother about stalling ma’am off. He could
promise to co-operate, hedge, stall, play for time. Anyway, she
couldn’t bring her grandiose schemes to fruition in time. Not now.
Not after the straw in the wind that was Hackensack.

As for Lord Ashley and his friends and the rest of the jig-saw
that would make up the most frightful weapon the world had ever

NEBULA

known — that problem would be taken care of with every stroke of
the clock. He had only to wait until he could legitimately say, along
with all the others, that he no longer had the information. He
stretched luxuriously — ^wincing as his back pained — and then lay
down on the bed to catch up on his sleep.

Everything seemed cut and dried. No troubles at all — except,
maybe, making sure that he was clever enough to tell ma’am what
she wanted to know in large enough doses to avoid being whipped,
but not so fast as to give her too great an area of domination before
the vital information petered out of all their brains. v

He closed his eyes. Everything was lovely. Perhaps the best
thing of all would be that he would be able to find out how June was
coming along. He felt the wprst kind of ingrate when he thought
of his sister. There- the poor kid lay, suffering from cancer that no-
one apparently had the remotest idea of how to cure completely. . . .

Slowly, Colborne sat up on the bed. His eyes were glazed.
There was a loud hissing in his ears. There, hanging in words of
fire in his brain, was the first half of a complete and final cure for
cancer.

Someone else must have the rest of that knowledge. And here
he was, a prisoner. And there June lay dying. And with every tick
of the clock the person who had this vital information was hurrying
towards utter forgetfulness.

CHAPTER XIX

“ Except for Walter Colborne and Sally Picton, they’re all
present and correct. Sir William,” John Roland said. He was flushed
of face and his hair was on end. He had just spent a hectic hour
shepherding all the passengers aboard the train into the identical
positions they had occupied on the fateful day. It had not been easy,
even with the aura of chill and grim efficiency imparted by the
watchful military.

“ Very good, John. The scientists happy?”

“ Yes, Sir William. Happy as children playing with a hand
grenade.” He nodded towards the train. A posse of earnest
scientists, with technicians helping, was swarming over the carriages,
measuring angles, running tapes from the fire box where the
explosion had taken place. They were building up a composite three-
dimensional picture of the course of the information exploding
from the alien encyclopedia.

By the time a few hours had passed and everyone was hot and

WISDOM OF THE GODS

'tired and thirsty, the job was finished. Now they knew almost
exactly — as accurately as they would ever know — just what informa-
tion had radiated outwards and what brains it had impinged upon
during its passage. One man, sitting in the front of the train, just
obscured a small portion of the head of a boy sitting two carriages
towards the rear. Take the information the man had, throw the
half-completed facts at the boy — expect to come up with the rest.
Sometimes, it worked. Too often, they were sadly aware that one
man had much of the first half of entries in the Galactic Intelligencer
and until they could question him, they wouldn’t know what ques-
tions to put to all the others behind him.

“ This damned man Colborne’s a nuisance,” said one of the
government scientists, glaring at Lord 'Ashley.

“ I quite agree,” Lord Ashley said imperturbably.

“ That tramp feller, Tom What’s-’is-name, was asleep in a
field,” John Roland said, butting in. “And we know about the
horse riders. The only one left is Hackensack.”

“ I’m expecting a reply from the agency on that,” said Sir
William. “He’s disclaiming all knowledge of the affair now, you
know.”

“ You know what that means,” Lord Ashley blew through his
moustache. He, ip turn, glared at General Abercrombie and Colonel
Starkie standing beside the Saucy Sal. “ I hope you soldiers find
Walter before the lot vanishes.”

“ We will.” Abercrombie spoke first, throwing Colonel Starkie
off whatever he had been going to say. “ And when we do ”

“When you do, general, you will bring him to me, pronto!”
There was more steel in Lord Ashley’s voice than had ever gone
through the gates of Toledo.

He turned sharply on the government scientist.

“ I’m interested in Colborne’s wellbeing — and in the wellbeing
of his sister.” He dug his stick viciously into the permanent way.
“ Have you foimd anything so far that might be any form of cure
for cancer?”

The government scientist’s rimless spectacles shone in the sun-
light as he shook his head. “ No, my lord. There’s been absolutely
nothing on cancer from anyone here.”

The opening of the wooden door found Walter Colborne stand-
ing stupidly before his gaoler, both his arms upraised and shooting
pains running in lines of fire from elbows to fingers. He must have
been hammering on the door for a long time. He had no recol-

NEBULA

lection of the interval between his recognition of the partial cancer
cure and this moment when the surly gaoler stepped in and said:
“ What’s all the row about?”

“ I want to see ma’am. At once! Jump to it!”

The gaoler had once been a policeman. He had discarded his
blue uniform when he had changed his allegiance from the Queen
to ma’am. He now wore light summer clothing with a blue knotted
ribbon round his arm. Somehow, to Colborne, aU these people who
had been talked to by ma’am, and who had thereby, through the
wiles of alien science, become her pawns subservient to her will,
seemed to have lost their individual identities. He could feel no
kinship in humanity with this ex-policeman. He was just a body and
a face and a blue ribbon.

“ She’s out of town. You’ll have to wait. And keep quiet.”

“ I must see her.” Colborne tried to push past.

The gaoler seized his arm. “ Oh no you don’t! Get back in
there, sonny boy.” He gave Colborne a push.

There was no conscious mental command to his muscles. Had
there been, it is very likely that nothing would have happened. In
the event, Colborne was sucking his knuckles and staring dazedly
down at the unconscious man on the floor.

He had never knocked out anyone in his life before.

He had no time now to analyse the sensations caused by this
fascinating new deed. He bundled the man into the ceil,, locked
the door on him, and went smartly out of the police station’s main
door, knotting the stolen blue ribbon around his own arm.

That had only been so ridiculously easy because the gaoler had
been expecting no violence. The value of surprise, which value
Colborne prized through his extensive researches into the campaigns
of long ago, had once again paid off.

That was something that extra-terrestrial science hadn’t taught

him.

He attracted no attention as he went towards ma’am’s head-
quarters. She had taken over the historic Corn Exchange, leaving
the Town Hall to the dignitaries of the Council who were now her
willing puppets. It appeared to Colborne that the town was normal;
but he sensed the undercurrents of passion and unsteady violence
that simmered, ready to break out on the single word of ma’am. It
alarmed him. Those long-dead aliens had the power to disrupt and
destroy a civilisation. It had been merely a part of the information
they carried about with them, ready to be used if the need should
have arisen. But with the broadcast scattering of their star-begotten

WISDOM OF THE GODS

wisdom, like any fresh and heady knowledge, it had toppled the
sanity of those who had received it. It was much like pouring radical
ideas and book-learning into darkest Africa. Spontaneous com-
bustion was bound to follow. Years would be required. to assimilate
the alien wisdom. He hadn’t got years. He had to find what he
wanted to know about curing cancer within hours, minutes, possibly.

Ma’am was out of town. She had gone with an armed retinue to
take over the next fair-sized town. The buses were still running.
Feeling that the action was fantastic, that it was an intrusion from
the Arabian Nights, Colborne bought a ticket and setded down for
the bus journey.

Apart from the different orientation of church to pubs, die
next town was the same as that he had left. He was directed to
ma’am’s temporary headquarters, and marched rapidly up the drive-
way into the “ Lord Nelson.” Ma’am was holding state in the
saloon bar. People were gathered around as she talked, and it was
very obvious that she had the alien power to influence per-
sonalities, to sway people’s emotions and through the manipuladons
of individuals to dictate an overall policy. And that policy meant a
world that Colborne could only contemplate with horror.

The blue ribands were well in evidence; but the guns were dis-
creetly hidden. Ma’am looked up, saw Colborne, and she stopped
speaking vzith such abruptness that people’s heads turned to scruti-
nise the intruder.

“ Why, hullo, Walter,” ma’am said pleasantly. “ How did you
get here?”

“ I must talk to you at once, urgently, Sally. It’s a matter of
life or death.” The words sounded no more dramatic or musical
comedyish than they in fact were.

She frowned, then excused herself, and walked with her usual
composure over to Colborne standing at the door.

He was reminded irresistibly of the time he had first met her,
in the tea-room at the Bay, just after the explosion. Her short
auburn hair shone in the sunshine slanting in through the door. Her
figure was neat and trim in jodhpurs and green shirt, with a yellow
scarf casually knotted round her neck. She looked all the things in
a girl that a man needs.

Colborne had to remind himself with severity that she wasn’t
Sally Picton any more. She was ma’am. With that his determination
crystallised. He would have to double-cross her, treat her as a
dangerous lunatic; if necessary, he’d have to — but his mind refused

NEBULA

to accept that inescapable line of reasoning. He smiled, his mouth
dry.

“ My people are all about, Walter,” ma’am pointed out gravely.
“ Have you decided to join me?”

“ Yes.” Colborne watched with clinical interest the flare of
passion in her eyes. “ I’m willing to give you all the information
I have that you ask for. But there’s something I must know. I
believe that even you will understand.”

“ Go on.”

“ You know about my sister June. I have the cure to cancer
in my mind. But — but only part.” He lickel his lips. “ You were
in the direct line with me — your brain received the tag ends of stuff
that started in mine.”

She smiled. “ I know that. * Too well. So, you want me to
give you the rest of the cure.”

“ Please.”

Slowly,' each swing a stroke of doom, she shook her head.
“ Sorry, Walter. I don’t have that information.”

“ At least,” he said bitterly, “ you’re honest. How about the
others of your people?”

“ I can ask. I don’t believe they have.”

“ You have to be asked in a certain way. Only by asking what
follows on what I have can you tell for sure.” He spoke with
desperate urgency, outlining what he had of the cancer cure. “ Any-
thing there?” he asked at the end.

“ Sorry, Walter. But,” she went on with determination, “ we
can do a deal. I’ll check my people. You know, you’re the only
person I can’t seem to influence. Those soldiers you called to your
assistance in the ditch — now they’re some of my most enthusiastic
supporters. Must be the alien smff in your mind. If we don’t know
the answer ”

“ Then I’ll have to go elsewhere.”

“ I don’t think I could allow that.” She looked past him,
through the open door. “ Here’s Adkins.” Her eyes swung back
to Colborne. “ My God, Walter. Did you escape?”

He didn’t bother to reply. He’d already guessed she thought
that he’d been brought here. He turned sharply on his heel as
Adkins said loudly: “There he is!”

Any return to captivity would mean the end of his hopes to find
the cure for June. It was evident that ma’am hadn’t realised the
significance of the Hackensack episode, and that therefore she didn’t
realise a term had been set to her wild schemes. She’d aim to keep

WISDOM OF THE GODS

him locked up until he broke down, and with the bait of finding out
about the cure for him, she’d guess he would break down very
rapidly.

As Adkins entered, Colborne took a step towards him and
kicked him in the stomach.

“ Surprise, you so-and-so’s!” he shouted, and dashed out the
door and down the short gravelled driveway. This business of hit-
ting people was infectious. The bulky mass of Macnaughten was
levering itself from a car with its engine still running. Macnaughten
had a Sterling sub-machine gun slung over one shoulder — a gun
he must have acquired from the soldiers tamed by ma’am — and his
movements were in consequence awkward. Colborne did not pause
in his headlong sprint. Momentarily, he expected the crash of bullets
into his back.

“ Hey!” Macnaughten started to say. Then Colborne hit him,
a wild swinging blow that did not do much damage apart from
dazzlement. He followed that up with another kick, and
Macnaughten went down, green in the face and hands clutching his
abdomen.

Colborne leaped into the car, a dark blue and lavender Zodiac,
and with the open door swinging crazily, sent the car roaring down
the main street. He was thankful for the twisty old-world road.
As he rounded the corner past the grey lichen-covered stone walls
of the church a despairing burst of fire sounded and the rear window
smashed to pieces. The big speedometer erupted into a shower of
glass shards. Colborne felt a sharp sting on Ms cheeck.

Then the old stone walls were between him and the “ Lord
Nelson ” and he was under cover.

He was shaking all over. He pressed down savagely on the
accelerator and the big car leaped down the country roads. Pursuit
would begin immediately, he knew that.

The world and its problems seemed infinitely remote under the
prodding impact of his need to find the cure for June. It was a
desperate chance; but now he saw quite clearly what he had to do.
Things had boiled up until they had come to a head; before him lay
one solitary objective and he didn’t care what he did just so that
he did that one thing.

CHAPTER XX

Walter Colborne took one hand off the steering wheel, reached
out and slammed the door shut. He increased the car’s speed as

NEBULA

he left town and headed along white and leafy country lanes.
Frequent glances in the mirror showed no pursuit. That was a
matter of time. He thought of Adkins and Macnaughten and the
surprised looks on their faces when he had hit them. He could not
think of Sally.

Somewhere, someone must have the rest of the cure for cancer.
In a reactionary release of all his pent-up emotion and frustration,
in the breaking down of the feeling of suffocation under which he
had been living during the past days, and in a happy willingness to
surrender himself to overpowering forces of circumstance, he was
glad to have to think of one thing and one thing alone. Gone were
his self-doubts and fears that his course of conduct was not only
selfish but criminally lunatic. He didn’t care now what he did, just
so that the one central fact — the cancer cure for June — was given
into his possession.

He was driving without consciousness, thought or effort; his
imagination was already ahead of him, weighing what he was going
to say to Lord Ashley. A cheerful little Austin Seven rattled along
a straight stretch of road ahead; in a smooth swoop, he cut over to
the wrong side of the road to pass. His first reaction was surprise.

WISDOM OF THE GODS

The back of the Austin Seven erupted into a shower of yellowed
glass. Ugly gashes appeared about the mudguards. A single quick
flick of the eyes into the rear mirror showed him the black car
swinging on to the crown of the road after him and two men clinging
to the opened windows, shooting at him with sub-machine guns.

He drove like a maniac. Perhaps, at that moment, Walter
Colborne was a maniac. He could not allow himself to be stopped,
now that he had come so far. He almost collided with the large-
tyred armoured car rolling towards him and he barely scraped past,
ripping off an entire wing panel as he did so. He had no time for
thought. The officer in the A.F.V. must either have sized up the
situation remarkably quickly, or perhaps he was acting on pre-
arranged orders to cover this sort of eventuality.

The armoured car’s gun belched. Colborne didn’t see the effect
of the shot on the pursuing car. He caught a glimpse of the black
body turning over like a fairground ferris-wheel car, then everything
slid out of his vision. He drove on relentlessly.

A green car flying a starred flag from the radiator cap fell in
behind him and paced him along the country lanes. Trees and
hedgerows passed backwards like a jerky film being re-reeled in a
nightmare. More soldiers and tanks appeared to right and left.
Colborne went straight through the royal road they left open.

He had recognised by now the fact that they knew who was
driving the car. These army men, by following their orders to allow
him through, were favouring his own designs. He had a tight feeling
in his chest and blood from the cut on his cheek flowed saltily into
his mouth.

Nether Ambleton was not as he remembered it. It looked more
like one of those sacrificed villages blasted in a Civil Defence
exercise; where soldiers show eager shop assistants and clerks how
to deal with the fires and rubble left by a hydrogen bomb dropped
fifty miles away.

The Golden Lion might well have been Supreme Allied Head-
quarters during any recent conflict. Colborne brought the Zodiac
to a tyre-torturing halt outside, opened the door and jumped out.
As his feet hit the ground he started running. A hand fell on his
arm and brought him to an abrupt standstill.

“Hullo there, Walter! Glad to see you again.”

Lord Ashley, leaning into that invisible wind, was standing
smiling genially down upon him. Beagle and Winthrop stood smil-
ing by his elbows. Colonel Starkie and a general Colborne didn’t
recognise stood scowling a little way off. Other people he recog-

NEBULA

nised came running from the open door of the Golden Lion. Soon,
he was the centre of an excited but expectantly silent crowd. Lord
Ashley had taken command of the situation with that imperturbable
good humour that was never seen ruffled in public.

After Colborne had seen the little Austin Seven shattered and
the armoured car in turn wreck his pursuers’ car, everything had
happened in a daze. Now that he had escaped, had reached safety,
the experience came as an anticlimax.

“ I escaped,” he said, coughing a little. He put a hand up to
his cheek. “ I’m all right. Look, Jeffers, I must talk to you
alone ”

“ Questions we must ask,” the general said, stepping forward
with an air of taking over. ,

Lord Ashley introduced him as General Abercrombie. “ One
nioment,” Lord Ashley went on smoothly. “Walter — you know
that people will soon forget what they learned from the G.I.?”

“ Yes. That’s what ”

“Very good. Look, Walter, I’m your friend. You believe
that, don’t you? I wouldn’t advise you to do anything against your
own best interests.”

“ I say,” Beagle interrupted, his long yellow face animated.
“ The poor feller’s just escaped. He’s hurt. Why don’t we all go
inside and have a drink?” ^

Lord Ashley nodded decisively. “ Good notion, Beagle. And
we can get Cremieux to look at that face of yours, Walter. Whilst'
we talk, that is. There’s not a minute to lose.” He turned and
marched briskly inside, his hand warm and friendly on Colborne’s
elbow.

“ I want to make a bargain, Jeffers,” Colborne said as soon as
they were inside the bar. Nothing had gone as he had expected.
There was an uncomfortable lack of the spontaneous friendship he
had automatically expected. But, what the hell — ^he was holding
back information for which these men would sell their souls, wasn’t
he? What did he expect; the red carpet treatment?

Lord Ashley cocked an eyebrow at him in silent appreciation.
Beagle and Winthrop looked, each in his own way, surprised. The
soldiers had efficiendy set up a barrier and the three men and the
two military stood talking in a little oasis. Colborne looked around
for John Roland. He felt that he would like that quiet man’s
support.

“ Did you know I’d escaped?” he asked.

“ Oh, yes,” General Abercrombie said. “ As soon as your car

WISDOM OF THE GODS

hit the main highway, we had you spotted.” He moved his hands
casually. “ Tell me. Larksthorn, isn’t it?”

“ Yes. Though much good it will do you.” Colborne rapidly
oudined the situation, finishing with a bitter; “ But as soon as you
send soldiers in, they’ll be converted, like the others were.”

“ I see. WeU, we’ll see.”

“ But this is wasting time!” Colborne tried to control the heavy
thumping of his heart — and gave up a job that was physiologically
impossible. “ I’ll make a bargain, Jeffers. I’ll give you everything
you want to know in return for one piece of information.”

Lord Ashley’s face did not change expression. But his hands
tucked themselves firmly inside his jacket pockets. He looked like
a man about to swallow a teaspoonful of hideous medicine. “ Go
on, Walter.”

“ I have the cure for cancer ”

“ The devil!” exclaimed Beagle.

“ What did you expect?” Lord Ashley said sadly. “ I’ll be frank,
Walter. I was hoping to find sufh a cure in the information we
have and use it to bargain with you. I’d have been unable to sleep
well the rest of my life — but I’d have done it. But you already have
it. You have so much. When I checked that we did not possess a
cancer cure — or anything on cancer, come to that — I was almost
relieved. But, Walter, I was also sorry that we weren’t going to
have a lever, to shift you, after all.”

Colborne just sat there speechless.

Lord Ashley went on: “ Anyway — you were talking about a
bargain. How does cancer come into it?”

Beagle cleared his throat. Colborne just sat. He didn’t know
what his face looked like; it must have been rather horrifying from
the others’ expressions. Beagle said gently : “ We’ve kept in touch
with Saint Angelo’s. I’m afraid there’s little hope — something went
wrong ”

“ Something — went — ^wrong ” Colborne said.

“ If you have the cure, Walter,” Winthrop said testily, “ then
everything will be all right. Let’s get hold of Cremieux and get
him to translate it and phone through right away.”

Colborne roused himself. Well — he had been so confident that
someone would have the cure that failure had come as more than
a shock; it was as though the impossible had suddenly become com-
monplace. And he still had a bargaining point. Of course! He
came alive with animation again.

“ Listen, Jeffers. I’ll give you what you want — that ruddy

NEBULA

suicidal bomb, everything — if you can find me the man or woman
who has the rest of the cure in their brain. You see — I only have
half of it.”

“ I — see!” Lord Ashley’s words came on a great indrawn
breath. “ I see!”

“ I’ll give you all I know on it. Cremieux can interpret, where
necessary. Get all the people who were on the train that day, fire
tlie stuff at them, and get their answers. You probably wouldn’t
have been sure they didn’t know without that.”

“ That goes for the rest of the information you have, Walter.”

“ Sure. We’ll have time. Hackensack was on the edge of the
explosion, a good distance off. His knowledge faded early; the rest
will hang on for a time.” His facp tightened as his muscles jumped.
“ It has to! That’s the only way I’ll co-operate.”

“ Very well, Walter. If that’s the way you want it.”

Winthrop stroked his stomach. His face was sour. “ Pretty
quick to give us all these terribly wicked secrets, aren’t you Walter,
when there’s something you want to know?” He said: “What hap-
pened to your highfalutin scruples?”

“Winny!” said Lord Ashley.

“ I say ” said Beagle. But his heart wasn’t in any defence

of Colborne right then.

“ I know,” Colborne said without feeling. “ I deserve all the
filthy names you care to call me. I’ve had it coming to me for a
long time, I suppose. But things look a little different when some-
one you love lies dying and you almost have the cure in your hands.”
His face was very pale. “It’s maddening! Something inside you
seems to choke you up; your hands itch to do something, to smash,
to rend, to destroy — it’s ghastly. I tell you, friends. I’ll give you the
secret of how to poison every mother’s year old baby if I can save
my sister. Funny, isn’t it? How loyalties and principles crumble
when they run up against the old thalamus in full stride. Hell’s
bells and buckets of blood! I know I’m a louse, a coward — all the
things you care to name — but I can’t sit idly by and watch my
sister die!”

“ All right, Walter,” Lord Ashley said quietly, into the hush.
“ We’ll check everyone.”

“ But they’re all spread over hell and gone!” protested
Winthrop.

“ So we contact them.”

“ But the time!” Colborne started up, agitation fluttering his
hands and making his stomach heave. “ There’s so little time left!”

WISDOM OF THE GODS

“ We know where each person has gone. At least, John Roland
does. We can contact them all by telephone and have Cremieux
speak to them. We’ll corral a horde of people, get a full scale opera-
tion under way.” His fine old Edwardian face was frosty. “ We
need the information you have. Waiter, for the betterment of man-
kind in general. You have had the whole situation in the wrong
perspective. More good will come of this than bad, believe me.”
He sighed. “ That the leap forward of the human race, for a good
century in a matter of days, must depend on the fate of one young
girl — it’s a queer commentary on human behaviour.”

“ Perhaps the human race isn’t worth all this bother?”

“ Don’t talk rot! We — that is, all mankind — haven’t come so
far against all the dangers we’ve surmounted just to blow ourselves
off this little planet. Don’t you believe it. We’ve a hell of a lot to
do in the future, and this Galactic Encyclopsedia is like having our
future course charted for us. We won’t go soft from having secrets
of the Galaxy dumped into our laps. It’ll spur us on to greater
striving. We need what you know, Walter.”

“ Yes,” said Beagle, softly. “ We need what you know,
Walter.”

“ Well — get those telephone lines humming.” Colborne spoke
with determined toughness and callousness. God knew, he couldn’t
feel cynical about it, not any more. But if June died because he
hadn’t done ail he could — then — then: “ If she dies, you’ll freeze ha
hell before I tell you a single thing.”

Abercrombie began to say something angrily. Lord Ashley
hushed him up quickly. He began to issue orders in his cool, cul-
tured voice and, as usual, things happened fast. Colborne spoke
into a tape recorder microphone, detaiUng what he knew of the
cancer cure. Then John Roland, walking brightly in and buckling
down to it without waste of words and with a smooth, grim
efficiency that heartened Colborne, issued lists and started the long
process of telephoning everyone who might possess the other half
of the cure.

It became a lengthy, drawn out process. Food and drinks
staled and became cold as the hours dragged on. The lights went on
and still the long-distance calls went out and the names were
crossed off. “ Tell them to stay near a phone at all times,” Lord
Ashley ordered. “ We’ll be coming back with other questions later.”

“ I hope so,” said Colborne. “ I hope so.”

“ We will, Walter. I feel it in my bones.” He hesitated, and
then said: “Just in case — would you like to :|:ecord the rest of your

NEBULA

knowledge? I can supply you with plenty of starting off points
beside the bomb. Interesting scientific stuff — ^pure science, that is.
Maths. Winny’s mad keen to ”

“ All right.” It would be something to do. “ Although, my
knowledge will be the last to fade. I was nearest to the explosion.”

The night passed somehow.

As John Roland’s blue pencil inexorably crossed off name after
name on his list, Colborne’s feeling of suffocation increased. From
time to time he found himself staring down at the list, rigid, arms
braced on the table, and seeing nothing else in all the world save
June’s young face, white and twisted with pain. It was strange how
a man’s whole conception of the Universe could be changed by the
fate of one insignificant person. How even those things a man
considered sacred copld be as* easily brushed aside as a clinging
spider’s web in the darkness, as soon as they interfered with the
dictates of his own nature. And yet, however contemptible he
might consider himself, he knew quite simply that he couldn’t
change. He had to go on. Nothing mattered now beyond the
immediate objective of finding the cancer cure. He didn’t even
bother to think about any possible future after that.

Towards dawn, haggard, unshaven, red-eyed, he forced down a
cup of coffee and turned, sickened, away from the proffered food.
The list was down now to four people. One after the other, the blue
pencil went slowly through their names. The police had roused
local people from their beds, questioned them again to the accom-
paniment of tired curses against the ill-luck of ever having been on
the train that day, and reported back their failure. Even old Tom
the poacher had swore blind ’e didn’ know nothing about it, s’welp
’im.

“And you say those damn fool women riding horses didn’t
receive this information, Walter,” Lord Ashley said. He had
freshened up and now looked as poised and imperturbable as ever.
“ I’m afraid it looks as though it’s no good, then. We’re both the
losers.”

“ After all, Walter,” pointed out Winthrop. “ It’s not as
tliough you’ve lost anything. No-one knew how to deal properly
with cancer; and you’ll have to look at it in the light that we still
don’t.”

“ Go to hell, Winnie,” Colborne said despairingly. “ I know.
I know that I hold half the answer. Can’t you see the difference
between that and not knowing anything at all? Can’t you see how
that tears me to pieces?”

WISDOM OF THE GODS 91

“ That’s how we felt about the scientific aspects of it all,
Walter,” Beagle said gently.

Wintlirop said : “ I grudge every minute you’ve kept me away
from this latest information of yours, Walter.”

Colborne turned on him. “ I suppose you don’t have what I
want to know in that one-track brain of yours?”

Winthrop’s indignant denial was cut short by the eruption into
the room of General Abercrombie, with Colonel Starkie trailing
along behind rather like a tug being swept along by a runaway liner.
John Roland, carrying his blue-pencilled list, followed. He looked
helplessly at Colborne.

“ I’ve had enough of this nonsense,” Abercrombie started, blow-
ing out his cheeks as he spoke, giving an impression of bluff hearti-
ness quite foreign to his nature. “ This is a very simple matter of
National Defence. Colborne here has military secrets which it is
his duty to deliver up to the Crovra. Any bargaining is right out
of the question.” He glared with much bristling of eyebrows and
moustache at Colborne. “ You understand, Colborne. This is a
serious matter and you are committing a very grave offence.”

“All I understand is that you’ve carefully waited until the
bargaining idea has fallen through because your side hasn’t got what
I want before you took up this stupid attitude.” Colborne felt his
weariness overpowering him, making him reckless with the betray-
ing drug of fatigue. “ As far as I am concerned, I loiow nothing
that you want. And you’ll oblige me by getting to hell out of here.”

After Abercrombie had simmered down, Colborne added :
“ Tell me. What’s happened about Larksthorn?”

“ We’re moving in today. Big operation. You’ll have to under-
stand, Colborne, that you are no longer a free agent. You’ll be
conscripted into the Service; then you’ll have to ”

“ You can’t do ”

“ But we can. Your commission as a second Ueutenant — a suit-
able rank, don’t you think? — ^will be through as fast as the machinery
can manage it. Then you’ll sing a different song, me lad.”

“ I didn’t mean that. You and your sabre-rattling — to use an
out of date expression dear to an historian — don’t mean a thing.
I fail to see why it is necessary to make a so-called big operation of
Larksthorn. Don’t you realise ”

Abercrombie interrupted. His face was purple, and his inter-
ruption, also, was of that colour. Colborne didn’t recognise more
than one word in three. He waited until the general had run out
of first-line breath, and then said quietly: “You know, general.

NEBULA

that knowledge of the encyclopaedia is fading from people’s minds?
Well, then, in a short time things will be back to normal. No need
for violence at all.”

“ No need ! No need ! Here you have a gang of people — a
gang getting larger every day — a miserable collection of cut-throats
who have thrown off their allegiance to this country and are nothing
but out and out rebels.” He gestured violently at Lord Ashley.
“ You’ve explained what these people are. They’re nothing but a
bunch of aliens, of extra-terrestrials, wearing human bodies. We’ve
got to exterminate the lot of them. It’s the only safe course.”

Colborne thought of his blows of the day before. He said:
“ You understand force, general. What would it cost me to sock
you on the chin?”

“ Now, now, Walter,” said Lord Ashley, a httle uneasily. “ The
general doesn’t understand the scientific side of things too well.”
He winked at Colborne from his disengaged side. He went on
speaking, riding over the general’s threatened eruption. “ Well,
now, Walter. It seems we don’t have the rest of the magic formula.
What are you going to do?”

The nagging feeling that after all, nothing really mattered any
more, had been creeping like a palsy over Colborne. When all was
said and done, what right had he to stop other men from blowing
themselves to bits? He wasn’t God Almighty, with powers of life
and death. Although — looked at dispassionately, that’s just what
he did have. And the responsibility was proving too much for him.
He couldn’t' think clearly about June any more. Whatever he did,
a nasty little tendril of fate licked out like a serpent’s tongue and
tripped him up, so that he fell with his face in the mire. One thing
was certain — he wouldn’t do anything Abercrombie wished. That
was for sure. And even that was a pitifully inadequate, a childish,
reaction of petulant frustration.

“ Give me a microphone and the reports you have from the
infected people you questioned. I’ll give you all I know, except —
I’ll have to think some more about the bomb.” It was an .evasion.
He was still trying to take the weakling’s middle course, and keep
his fingers clean.

“ I’ll take your other stuff out and get onto all those people
again,” offered Roland. “They’re going to love me.”

“ Everything I have, everything we all have,” Colborne said
dully. “ It’s all yours.” He shook his head and waited until the
sparks of depression had cleared. “ Everything except the one thing
I want. I suppose that’s life.”

WISDOM OF THE GODS

The morning passed slowly — from die viewpoint of waiting
for anything to happen. It passed with extraordinary rapidity from
the viewpoint of getting through the work before aU memory of. the
Galactic Intelligencer faded from the minds of the people who had
ridden on the Saucy Sal that day.

Towards noon the mass of wordage was being reduced to man-
ageable proportions; Roland reported good progress. Colborne
found he couldn’t care less. He brooded. He wondered just what
he would do, now, in these changed circumstances, when the time
came for him to make up his mind. Having given up all the infor-
mation he could until the last fe\y people’s batch of knowledge was
presented to him, he took a stroll in the Golden Lion’s gardens.
The sun was warm, and flowers drowsed fragrantly in the heat. It
was very quiet. Winthrop walked out, a paper in his hand, and
came up to him.

“ I say, Walter — don’t mind me. Sharp tongues cover an
embarrassed sympathy, you know. Or so I’m told. Look. What

do you know about ” He had screwed up his eyes and Colborne

guessed he was mentally reviewing some fragment of knowledge he
had received from the G.I. An outrageous expression flashed upon
his face. His eyes popped open — he looked as though he had sat
upon a nail. “Walter! It’s all gone! The encyclopaedia! Gone!
Vanished ! ”

“ So it’s come, then. You were at the tail end of the train.
Gradually, the knowledge will fade from different people, here and
there, in accordance to their seating. I’m not really able to bother,
now.” He clenched his fists. “Even if someone — someone we
haven’t found yet — -had the cancer cure, it’s going, it’s fading from
their brain, now, as I talk to you.”

“ I’m — I’m sorry, Walter,” said Winthrop.

“ You know. I’d have sworn Sally had it. But she was too
taken up with being ma’am. Silly girl — damn stupid woman.
What’ll happen to her when the knowledge fades?”

“ She doesn’t know?” Beagle had walked out to them.

“ No.”

“Could be nasty. Reversal of affection — you know.”

“ I hadn’t thought of that. But no — it couldn’t.”

“ It might. Reaction. Shame and hatred leading to ”

Lord Ashley walked out, striding purposefully, and standing
straight up. “ I’ve managed to detain Abercrombie from beginning
his tomfool ‘ operation ’ — and now that the knowledge is fading. I’ve
convinced him. We’ve established telephonic communication with

NEBULA

Larksthom. One or two people there are beginning to realise just
what they’ve been doing. They ask for strong police detachments
to be sent in. There’s going to be trouble.”

Colborne’s tiredness lifted. Sally — -Sally was going to be Sally
again. The thought cheered him, even with his deep depression over
June clogging his emotions.

John Roland leaned from a window. He looked alarmed. “ I
say! Walter! A phone call for you — from Larksthom.” He looked
around. “ Come quickly — I’ve bypassed the soldier-boys. You’ve
got about three minutes — then I’ll have to tell them.”

Colborne sprang into the air, caught the window ledge and
hauled himself into the room. His shirt ripped. The old tears
when it had been torn from his back opened and he angrily shredded
it away with one hand as he took the phone from Roland with the
other. “ Hullo. Colborne here.”

“Walter! Oh, Walter!” She sounded as though she was
speaking from the bottom of a half-empty wine-vat. “ It’s horrible !
I’m barricaded in the Town Hall — they’ve gone mad. Mad, the lot
ef them. They’re like wild beasts. It’s the opposite effect, I sup-
pose — ^hsten — did you hear that?”

He had heard a dull, far-off booming.

“ Yes. Are you all right?”

“ They’re breaking down the doors. All right? Yes. Oh !
Yes — I’m out of the nightmare. And, Walter — I’m sorry. Truly,
sorry. I didn’t — look — listen carefully — I know the rest of that
cancer cure.”

"You know!”

“Yes. I wanted to bargain with you — wanted to play it clever
— be ma’am — but you escaped. Walter — I ”

“ Tell me!”

She began to speak, rapidly, almost incoherently. Colborne
saw that John Roland had cut the extension into a tape recorder.
Sally had not spoken more than a half-dozen words before the distant
crashing magnified, crescendoed into a dull, ominous roaring. Some-
thing pinged sharply in the earphone.

“ They’re through ! ” Sally’s voice became ragged. She tried
to speak and Colborne heard her gasps. “ It’s no good. I can’t
make it. Goodbye, Walter — goodbye. I’m sorry for everything.”

“No, Sally! It can’t end — not like this ”

“ Goodbye, Walter.” There was a confused shouting, a dull
animal baying. He heard a sharp scream. Then, quite clearly.

WISDOM OF THE GODS

came Sally’s voice. “ Walter — I
love you! Goodbye — bye . .
The phone was dead.

CHAPTER XXI

The sharp, claw-like stings
over his back roused Colbome
in the helicopter to a realisation
of his surroundings. Someone
had exploded with wrath at
sight of his back and Doctor
Cremieux had been hastily sum-
moned. Now, with the good
doctor tinkering on him as they
winged through the summer air,
his head was clearing. John
Roland sat at the controls with
a terrifying grimness. Lord
Ashley, still imperturbable, sat
with Beagle and Winthrop in
the rear section. That was the
helicopter’s full load. As far as
Colbome knew, other men —
soldiers — were also on their
way to Larksthorn. They were
going to check the riots that
had broken out. Colbome was
going to sit beside a grave.

“ There might yet be
time, Walter,” Lord Ashley had
said. “ I know the Town Hall
there. Big old rambling place
put up in the middle of the
last century when they thought
the railways were bringing pros-
perity to the town. Old rooms
that could still contain dust
from Dizzy’s boots. She’ll be

NEBULA

able to hide— get away — don’t worry, man. She’ll be all right.”

“ And what she alone knows?”

No-one answered him. -

After a little, Roland said huskily: “ Anywhere in town I can
land? Or shall we put down in the main square?”

Lord Ashley said: “ You can land on the Town Hall roof, John.

If you blow some of the rate-payers’ slates off that’ll serve to remind
them of the way they’ve behaved.”

“ Wilco.”

Colborne could see a second helicopter fluttering along like
some great black spider hanging from a thread. He looked at it,
and then said: “ Don’t let that ass Abercrombie land there before
us, John. There might not be r6om enough for two helicopters —
and I’d hate to have to land on top of his. But I won’t wait for
him.”

“ All right.”

The journey he had driven at such reckless speed the day
before with the tommy-gunners after him was now covered in half
the time. The helicopter slanted down, sliding past the grey stone
church, hovering over the main square with its horse-troughs and
cobbles and electric street lighting and then with a whooshing rush
of wind, settling like a great bat on the Town Hall roof. The town
was in a ferment. Men- and women rushed through the streets,
carrying sticks and hammers and chair-legs, converging on the town’s
centre. Colborne could feel die mob violence rolling up in heavy
waves.

There had been so much of violence in the quiet countryside
since that explosion of the alien encyclopaedia. A small object from
the stars had created what could have been — what would still be — |
a world-wide upheaval. He wondered fleetingly, as the hehcopter
swayed, what lay in store for humanity when at last it had thrown
off the shackles of gravity and soared out into space. If this was
any sort of foretaste, then the future would be a very lively place — •
a very lively place indeed.

His limbs were cramped from the ride and there was an aching
stiffness over all his body; but he juinped from the helicopter nimbly
enough. He could not repress a gasp at the pain from his back as
he landed. Then he was running towards the first skylight he
could see.

The glass was already smashed. Looking down, he saw a long
dingy corridor-, with doors on either side. As good a place as any
to start the sort of search he had in mind. Something seemed to be

WISDOM OF THE GODS

sucked from the world, and he was aware that the helicopter’s
engine had been shut off.

In the new rush of sound the baying of the mob below floated
up, frighteningly loud. This must be the second wave. The first,
those he had heard over the telephone, must have been her blue-
arm banded bullies. He wondered if Adkins or Macnaughten had
been in that maddened lynch-mob, or if they had been driving the
car that had been after him; the car that had been blown up.

He kicked the rest of the glass in with his heel. John Roland
appeared at his side, calm and composed. Roland took off his coat,
laid it over the barred wooden slats between the gaping holes where
glass had been. Then, with a chuckled: “This beats high-diving!”
he plunged bodily through the skylight in a splintering chaos of
wood and glass and fluttering clothing. Colborne took all that in
his stride. He dropped down after Roland as though he entered
buildings in this fashion every day of his life.

Lord Ashley poked his head through the hole. “ You all
right, John?”

“ Yes. Nothing broken, thanks, Jeffers.”

Even then Colborne felt a flash of pleasure that Roland was
calling Lord Ashley Jeffers. They both ran down the passage. All
the doors were shut. No sounds disturbed the quiet of the old
building, save the long faraway thunder of The crowd outside in
the square.

“ She’s probably down below somewhere. In the back quar-
ters,” Roland said, running easily. “No sound from that mob on
the telephone.”

Colborne knew, then, what he expected to find. A crumpled,
broken and bloody body, huddled in a dusty room. The sort of
unnecessary, obscene, anti-human sort of death that made the whole
of life meaningless.

Running along beside Roland, he felt in his pocket to make
sure the scrappy sheet of foolscap was still safe.

The inner vision of Sally lying crumpled and smashed persisted.
If she was dead — even if by some miracle she was still alive but
had forgotten the cancer cure — the sentence of death would have
been passed upon June. If that did happen, then Walter Colborne
found with a strange emptiness in him that he didn’t much cate
what the rest of the moronic world did about blowing itself up. His
own personal interest in life would have been taken away. Oh, yes,
there would still be his work; he’d go on, bumbling about dusty
manuscripts trying to find out how the minds of people had worked

NEBULA

hundreds of years ago; but that would take up only a minor portioL,
of the spark that was himself. He hadn’t seen it so clearly before.
A man is made up of many components; but some of those parts
are more important than others. If the props of a man’s integrity
to life were knocked asunder, then the rest of him collapsed like a
wax idol in the sun.

Which was a fine piece of confused thinking and metaphor
mixing — somewhat excusable due to the circumstances, Colbome
decided, and ratded down the curving stairs with Roland at his heels.

“ The Army’s arrived,” Roland panted out.

Colborne could hear extraneous sounds through the pounding
of blood in his veins and the thunder of ideas in his brain. From
the confused clamour he deduced that Roland was right; the Army
with Abercrombie on a. metaphorical white charger at its head was
dispersing the mob. That was one pain off their necks, at least. So
far, here in the Town Hall, they had come upon no sign of occu-
pancy. They made no effort to conceal their presence. The hollow
reverberation of slamming doors followed their progress.

Nothing.

When at last — in an oddly chastened spirit — they found her,
the scene was almost too vividly what Colbome had imagined it to
be, for him to enter the wide musty room.

He stood at the door, looking in, as Roland and Lord Ashley
and his friends crossed the floor. Their feet made loud vulgar
sounds. It was exacdy like witnessing the last act of an opera from
the front row of the stalls. The heroine — dying, say, of consump-
tion and singing with village lustiness the while — the various sor-
rowing relatives standing about and soaring into complementary
song at the least excuse. Apart from the silence, which only made
the illusion the more gruesome, the feeling of staginess was strong
upon Colbome.

Betty, her head a pulped red mass, lay in dog-like devotion at
Sally’s feet. One. or two dead men, their blue arm ribands dread-
fully spattered, lay in a cluster where Betty’s gun had emptied itself.
Sally— the telephone receiver still clutched in one hand — and a
dead man lying on top of her, with a depression in his skull that
would exactly match the receiver, Colbome guessed — Sally lay
limp and white and like a flower accidentally broken from its stalk.

Roland looked up sharply from his knees beside her.

“ She’s just breathing Walter.”

Cremieux said in his precise way : “• Badly injured. But I tliink
we can save her. Here, like this ” He began to do things with

WISDOM OF THE GODS

objects taken from his black bag. Colborne turned away. Anti-
climax. The dead man lying on her must have prevented the final
act. Betty had been loyal, to the end. Now the rest of her mur-
derers were being rounded up by the Army. It didn’t feel right,
somehow. Everything was real again. The operatic effect had been
spoiled at the last. But then — that was like life, wasn’t it? Nothing
turned out in the way you expeced. He knew that he loved Sally.
What their relationship would be in the future he did not know; he
could feel only that now he needed deep peace, a little corner into
which he could creep and sleep and forget.

Some time later, with Sally lying upon a hastily made-up pallet,
she opened her eyes. She smiled at him. Her first words dis-
oriented his mental attitude. “Walter — did you know that the
Encyclopcedia Britannica 'contains over thirty-eight million words?
Over thirty thousand subjects? And that only covers in outline one
single teensy-weensy planet.” Her auburn hair flamed against the
white of bandages. “ We were dealing, with the G.I., with the
knowledge culled from a whole stellar civilisation, a galaxy-wide
culture. Too much for us, Walter.” Her lips were bloodless.
“ Too much.”

“ Quiet, Sally. Hush. You’re going to be all right. But you
must save your strength. It’s all over.”

“Look into your mind, Walter. Do you still ?”

He summoned something up, casually. No words of fire
appeared. The encyclopsedia had at last blown itself out.

“ All gone, Sally. All gone. But you’re the important subject
now ”

“ I’m sorry I — did what I did, Walter. It wasn’t me.”

“ I know.”

Lord Ashley said, gravely; “ So the bomb has gone, too,
Walter?” He sighed. “ Thank God for that. Now I don’t have
to be driven by my duty. Whilst it was possible for the country
to acquire it, I had to press on. Now — ^well. I’m again a private
individual, able to say — ‘To hell with the hell-bombs.’ I can live
witli myself again.”

“You mean?” Colborne started. Then stopped. Sally was
imploring him with her eyes. He bent closer.

“ In my pocket, paper — — ”

He took it out and read the rest of the cancer cure, neatly
written in Sally’s handwriting. It was all there, like the heavens
opening and the angels descending in glory.

100

NEBULA

When the room had steadied down around him, Cremieux said
gravely : “ I’ll get through to Saint Angelo’s at once. This will take
time, naturally; but I think you can take it for granted that your
sister will be restored to fu'l health.”

Colborne couldn’t say anything. He fingered the paper in his
pocket. He might have guessed that Sally would do the same thing
as he himself had done. And that left him in a cold and solitary
limbo between the crushing millstones of opposing ideologies. His
supreme moment had come.

Although every man lives alone in the world, he yet bears
responsibilities and ties to the rest of humanity; at that moment
Walter Colborne felt the whole awful weight of his sole respon-
sibility, It was for him — and him alone — to make the decision.

Beagle said ; “ A'pity about diat weapon. But still, the exercise
in piecing it together from what we have will be good practice.”
His long yellow face lit with enthusiasm. “ I’m looking forward,
rather, to the job. Most interesting.”

“ Most,” agreed Winthrop, stroking his stomach.

“ I can’t say how relieved I am,” Lord Ashley said, smiling
fondly at Sally. “ Funny how Mankind always seems to muddle
through to the right answer. Even in matters as grave as this.”

“ Uh — about that bomb,” Colborne said. “ Abercrombie ”

“I’ll handle him. The right answer. Yes, most appropriate.”

“ You mean — we’ll get the infernal thing, when we’re ready
for it, with all the practice we’re having with the current horrors?”

“ The bomb, Walter?” Lord Ashley blew through his mous-
taches. “ Good Lord, no! I meant — ^how convenient it will be for
you to have such a charming and attractive wife when you take up
your new position as historian ”

Colborne’s fingers crumpled the paper in his pocket.

It was always there, insurance. It would be there, for as long
as he lived.

It was always difficult to know what was right in the conflicting
claims of the modern world. It was inevitably hard to puzzle out
what was right. But when you had the right answer at last, it
seemed as though it had always been with you, easy of accomplish-
ment, fixed, not to be questioned.

“ Yes, Jeffers,” Walter Colborne said, looking at Sally. “ Yes,
I think we’re all going to get along very well from now on.”

KENNETH BULMER

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First Breakthrough

A factual survey of the very latest scientific information telemetered
back to Earth by the Russian and American Space Satellites

Just over one year ago the first
artificial satellite was launched.
To date six have been placed in
orbit and already a wealth of in-
formation in many scientific
fields has been collected by
them and transmitted to Earth.
Much of that information has
still to be studied and assessed,
and is still coming in, but a pre-
liminary report can now be writ-
ten describing this new, major
breakthrough in the struggle of
Man to overcome the barriers
that up to now have kept him out
of cosmic space.

The first sputnik, weighing
184 lb., was placed in an orbit
ranging from 118 miles to 600
miles above the Earth’s surface
and made 1,400 revolutions be-
fore plunging to incandescent de-
struction in the Earth’s atmo-
sphere. One month later, Sput-
nik II, half a ton in mass, and
with the dog Laika on board,
was projected successfully into an
orbit of minimum height 133
miles and maximum height 1,054
miles. This satellite lasted 2,400
revolutions, ending its life on
April I4fh, 1958.

The first successful American
attehapt. Explorer I, launched on
February ist, 1958, weighed 30
lb. and had a perigee of 219 miles
and an apogee of 1,587 miles
(above the Earth’s surface). Ex-
plorer I should last until the end
of 1962. Vanguard I, with a 4 lb.
satellite, was launched soon after,
102

on March 17th, into an orbit of
perigee 410 miles and apogee
2,500 miles. Its lifetime will be
many years long.

Explorer II was unsuccessful,
but Explorer III was placed in
orbit on March 26th and had a
mass of 30 lb. Since the perigee
was of order 100 miles it lasted a
short time only, ending its life
on June 28th.

On may 15th, the Russians
once again shook the world by
launching Sputnik III, weighing
I ton 6 cwt. into an orbit of peri-
gee 140 miles and apogee 1,200
miles. Equipped with solar bat-
teries and a whole laboratory of
instruments, this unmanned satel-
lite is in the form of a cone 5 ft.
8 in. in diameter and ii ft. 7 in.
in height.

It can be estimated, from infor-
mation released by the Russians,
that the rocket vehicle that
launched Sputnik III was prob-
ably about 300 ft. high and some
400 tons in weight. Their ability
to control such masses can be
judged from the fact tliat, on
entry into orbit, errors of 50
miles per hour and a half a de-
gree can be fatal.

So it appears that at least one
group of scientists and technolo-
gists on Earth can at will deposit
one ton of useful payload into an
orbit above the Earth’s amio-
sphere. This achievement is
emphasised if one realises that in
terms of energy requirements, a

FIRST BREAKTHROUGH

103

satellite in a few hundred miles
^orbit is already nine-tenths of the
way to the Moon.

The Americans, at the time of
writing, have tried one Moon-
shot which unfortunately was not
successful. Another U.S. attempt
is expected shortly and no doubt
a similar Russian programme
exists. However the Soviet scien-
tists have stated that they are
more interested in putting up a
manned Earth satellite and tenta-
tively give a date of lo years
hence for its accomplishment.
They may well be estimating
somewhat pessimistically.

Leaving the hardware that de-
posits the satellites in orbit, we
come to the information they
have collected. Some of their
findings confirm earlier theories
based on vertical rocket shots and
other methods of sounding the
upper atmosphere but a large
proportion of the data relayed to
Earth has painted a much more
detailed picture, in some cases
surprising the scientific world.

There are three ways of obtain-
ing information from an un-
manned artificial satelfite — firstly,
by observing its orbit visually
with or without a telescope,
secondly, by using radio methods
of observation (such as the Jod-
rell Bank telescope) and, thirdly,
by making the satellite radio
transmitter send back in code the
information collected by the in-
struments in the satellite.

The first method, carried out
by Moonwatch teams and other
groups all over the world, gives
the orbit of the satellite and
enables plots to be made of the
changes in it. These changes are
due to two main causes, the ellip-
ticity of the Earth and the drag
every time the satellite at perigee

enters the last wisps of the
Earth’s atmosphere. The fact tliat
the Earth is not a perfect sphere
causes the satellite’s orbital plane
to precess like a spinning top
while the perigee point moves in
the opposite direction in tltis
plane. Formulae exist coimecting
these rates with the degree of
flattening of the Earth and results
so far collected show that the
Earth is not quite as oblate as
scientists had thought. It was also
hoped to increase the accuracy of
our knowledge of distances on the
surface of the Earth by triangu-
lations, but observations are not
yet accurate enough for this
purpose.

A much better knowledge of
atmospheric density at high alti-
tudes (of importance to ballistics)
has been obtained from the decay
of satellite orbits. The original
eUiptic orbit gradually becomes
circular with the perigee decreas-
ing very slowly and from then on
die satellite spirals in rapidly.
Results indicate that previous
density estimates (based on in-
direct data such as the Aurora
Borealis and the heating of
meteorites) have been too small
by a factor of five to ten. In addi-
tion to this it has been possible
to detect the daily rnd latitude
variations in the atmosphere due
to its unequal heating by ultra-
violet, X-ray and other solar
radiations.

The second method, namely
radio observations of the satellite,
is of aid in establishing the orbit
in which the satellite moves. The
frequencies at which the radio
transmitters in the satellite signal
to Earth are known and these can
be compared with the frequencies
received. The changes are due to
the approach and recession of the

104

NEBULA

satellite to and from the observer
(just as a jet-plane’s engine
sounds shriller as it approaches
the observer, then falls in pitch as
it passes overhead).

In addition, the radio rising
and setting of satellites has been
recorded and compared with opti-
cal rising and setting. Radio set-
ting occurs later than optical set-
ting, while radio rising precedes
optical rising. The time differ-
ences determine the magnitude
of the deflection of the radio
beam which depends upon the
change in concentration of elec-
trons with altitude. For example,
the concentration of electrons at
a height of about 300 miles was
found to be about 16,000,000
electrons per cubic inch. Infor-
mation such as this helps in our
understanding of the interaction
of the Sun’s ultra-violet radiation
with the atmosphere.

The third method of collecting
information, by installing instru-
ments in the satellite, is useless
unless the information is tele-
metered back to Earth. A wide
variety of devices was incorpor-
ated in the first satellites. In
Explorer III and Sputnik III, re-
corders memorise die data accu-
mulated by the instruments, re-
leasing the information to ground
stations as they orbit over them.
Among the apparatus in these
satellites are devices designed to
register the number of hits of
micrometeorites, the pressure
and composition of the atmo-
sphere in its upper layers, the
concentration of positive ions, the
strength of the Earth’s magnetic
field, the temperatures exper-
ienced at such levels, the com-
position of cosmic rays and their
concentration, and the intensity
of solar radiation. In addition, in

Sputnik III, a special thermal
regulating system was incorpor-
ated which, by changing the co-
efficients of radiation and reflec-
tion of the sputnik’s surface, en-
sures a suitable temperature range
for the normal operation of the
instruments. This was done by
instalhng on the satellite’s sur-
face 16 shutters which are
opened and closed by means of
electric drives.

Figures for the number of mic-
rometeorite hits agree with pre-
vious estimates. For example, it is
estimated that about 3,000 tons
of micrometeorites of about 4
ten-thousandths of an inch
diameter fall onto the Earth every
twenty-four hours.

With respect to cosmic rays,
results released by the Americans
and Russians agree in part only.
These very high energy particles,
originating in the most distant
realms of space, are important to
the future of interplanetary travel.
If they are too intense, they would
injure a human being before he
had spent more than a few min-
utes in space. Their distribution
over the Earth’s surface is uneven,
since the Earth’s magnetic field
deflects them.

An analysis of data obtained
from Sputnik II shows that the
intensity of cosmic rays increased
by about 40 per cent, from an
altitude of 140 miles to 440 miles.
The increase is due mainly to the
diminishing of the screening
effect of the Earth itself. The data
should also shed new light not
only on the Earth’s magnetic field
but also on the magnetic field due
to sources outside the Earth.

According to preliminary re-
ports to members of the National
Academy of Sciences, the Ameri-
can Physical Society and the

FIRST BREAKTHROUGH

105

Washington scientific community
at a meeting in May, 1958, very
high intensity cosmic rays were
found by the American satellites
Explorers I and III. Reasonable
cosmic ray activity was measured
at altitudes below 600 miles but
at altitudes greater than about 680
miles an intense radiation field
was detected equivalent to at least
60 milliroentgen per hour. In
radiological health it is accepted
that the recommended permissible
dose for human beings is 0.3
roentgen per week. The radiation
found by the two Explorers is' 0.3
roentgen in 5 hours or less. These
figures must not, however, be
taken as final. Obviously a long-
period programme of satellite re-
search must be undertaken before
a complete picture of the circum-
Earth radiation fields, their
nature, intensities and distribu-
tion with time and space is
obtained. The results already
gained, nevertheless, help to show
the value of satellite-based instru-
ments in charting these regions.

The main effects on the dog
Laika of her space-flight in Sput-
nik II can be included here. The
changes ifi the main body func-
tions were converted into impul-
ses which were fed to the satellite
radio transmitters and finally
registered on the ground. In this
way respiration, cardiac activity
and blood pressure were studied.

During the ascent, when the
acceleration was many times that
of gravity, the animal was in a
position such that acceleration
acted in the direction from chest
to back. There came a point during
the increase of acceleration when
the animal ceased to move notice-
ably. Its heart contraction soon
after launching had trebled and its
breathing became fast and shal-
low. On entry into orbit weight-

lessness ensued and the frequency
of heartbeat and breathing gradu-
ally returned to normal. Blood cir-
culation also became normal. The
dog remained alive for some days,
apparently in good health and the
pressure in the life-compartment
did not fall, showing that not only
were the chemical methods for
maintaining a suitable atmosphere
adequate but that the compart-
ment did not leak.

We are not told how the dog
died. It may be that its last supply
of food contained poison or that a
timing mechanism broke a poison
gas capsule after a certain number
of days.

The effect of cosmic radiation
on the animal is not known. When
living creatures have spent some
time in a satellite and can be re-
turned safely to Earth we , will
learn what damage, if any, this
radiation causes. In general, how-
ever, it can be said that apart from
the as yet unknown radiation
hazard, an animal stands up well
to the stresses arising from space-
flight. The results confirm and
extend the data obtained from
vertical rocket ascents of dogs and
other animals.

These then are the first fruits of
knowledge from the satellites.
They show that vertical rocket
shots give no more than a small
fraction of the data obtained from
satellites and that we can look
forward to a vast increase of
knowledge in many scientific
fields when the first manned satel-
lite is in position. To take one
example only, astronomy, which
up till now has developed as best
it could impeded by the distor-
tions of the Earth’s atmosphere,
will at last live up to the famous
saying of St. Paul, “ For now we
see through a glass, darkly; but
then face to face!”

From then on Man, the highest
manifestation of life on this
planet, will voyage, in body as
well as in mind, into the realms
of cosmic space.

New Hard-Cover Science Fiction Reviewed by
KENNETH F. SLATER

Nearly twenty years ago THE
SWORD IN THE STONE was
published, and in the same year
(1939) its sequel appeared, TpE
WITCH IN THE, WOOD. In
1940 came THE ILL-MADE
NIGHT, making a trilogy of
fantasy yams by T. H. White
based on the Arthurian legend.
Then Mr. White left his theme
to hang (and his books to be-
come among some of the most-
sought-after titles for fantasy
enthusiasts, despite several
editions) and concerned himself
with other things until now a
fourth title has been added to
complete the Arthurian saga.
This is “ The Candle in the
Wind” and it fills pages 547 to
677 of THE ONCE AND
FUTURE KING (Collins, 25/-,
677 pp.), a new book containing
this new work and the three
previous books in one binding.
For the benefit of collectors who
already have the trilogy I
think it should be made clear
straight away that two chapters
have been added to the first part,
the second part has been largely
rewritten (and retitled “ The
Queen of Air and Darkness ”),
whilst the third part has had
but slight revision. As the
fourth and concluding book has
been published nowhere else, it
will be obvious that either you
106

stay as you are, or you get the
new whole book — and if you get
it now you may still be in time
to secure a “ first edition ”.

For those of you who have
never read any of the first three
books, let me say that in general
the story follows the “ popular ”
Malory myth of the life of
King Arthur, but that Mr.
White adds motivations, charac-
ters and characterisations, in-
cidents and sub-plots, never
dreamed of by most mythologists
and historians! Merlyn, wizard
and tutor extraordinary to
Arthur, is an amiable old gentle-
man (usually) who can remember
to-morrow for the next couple of
thousand years, but is often
absent-minded about the here-
and-now and yesterday. Arthur,
as a boy, is a boy in the “ Tom
Sawyer” tradition, with a some-
what Kiplingesque flavour added
to his activity by the “ special
lessons ” which Merlyn provides
to form his character. As, for
instance, when Arthur is placed
into the body of an ant for some
instruction in rabid nationalism.
Incidentally, I find dehght in the
thought of ants who communicate
thusly; “ 105978/ UDC report-
ing from square five. There is an
insane ant on square five. Over
to you.”

Those of you who know “ Le

SOMETHING TO READ

107

Morte D’Arthur ” will appre-
ciate the breadth of drama, the
all-pervading sense of the
struggle with Might and Right
(Arthur is continually faced with
the problem of deciding when the
two are one, and when Might is
not necessarily Justice), and the
other deeper implications of this
story which is, in the English
tradition, perhaps our nearest
approach to the “ god-hero ”
myth. At the same time Mr.
White has introduced consider-
able elements of the hghter side
of life, making the epic that
much more complete. As, . for
example, the hilarious adventure
of Sir Grummore and Sir
Palomides when they disguise
themselves as the Questing Beast
to divert poor King Pellinore
from his woes . . . and meet up
with the real Questing Beast, who
promptly developes amorous in-
tentions towards the fake
creature !

You will appreciate that this
book is not “ science ’’-fiction,
but it is in the very best fantasy
tradition, and a work worthy of
the attention of every science-
fiction addict.

FORTY YEARS ON by
Doreen Wallace (Collins, 13/6,
254 pp.) is one of those un-
fortunate books written to depict
the near future which appear a
little too late. This does not
necessarily detract from the
worth of the book, but is apt to
disconcert the reader. In this
particular case, the preamble to
the story proper refers to petrol
rationing in Britain following the
Suez crisis which “ came in, and
came to stay.” This contradiction
of fact makes it difficult for the
reader to “ get into ” the story —
it is like an ill-fitting coat, a little
tight in the armpit. However,

the reader is advised to ignore
this and suffer the minor dis-
comfort for the sake of the rest.

The scene of the opening
chapters is the Isle of Ely, in the
fen country, which lends itself
admirably to isolation after the
first H-bombs have severed com-
munications, destroyed the fen
drainage system, and literally
made an isle of Ely. Being a fen
dweller myself I cannot entirely
agree with the geographical areas
which are flooded, but I am
willing to bow to the probable
research of the author in this
matter. In any case, who is to
tell just what might happen
given the causes of the flood?

The immediate reactions of
the survivors in this cut-off area
are depicted with an imagination
which is gratifying. Only too
frequently authors make their
characters effect drastic revisions
of their normal fives. Here,
apart from enforced-by-circum-
stances changes (rationing of
available commodities, the return
to simpler methods of agriculture
and production) the life of the
country people continues with
little difference. There are no
enforced labour squads doing this
and that, no idealists drawing up
new laws and codes. The first
major trouble is economical,
arising naturally from the
countryman’s old habit — especi-
ally in times of trouble — of keep-
ing his money in an old sock (or
something) up the chimney or
under the bed. In consequence
there is no money coming into
the banks to recirculate — you see,
the old form of life has persisted
there, also!

Later there are scenes with
which one could quibble. Gamb-
ling, in money and tokens, is
eradicated by the introduction of

108

NEBULA

food coupons useable only by
the person to whom they are
issued and at that time. Frankly,
this is absurd — as any prison
warden, serviceman or gambler
would agree. Lacking some form
of token with which to gamble,
property or service becomes the
stake. Gambling is inherent in
mankind, and several thousand
years of history reveal a goodly
number of well-intentioned but
totally ineffective measures to
stop it.

The first half of the book
covers the setting up. of the Isle
community, its trials and
triumphs, its fulfilments and its
failures, and then the narrator,
Terry Cole, feeling he has filled
his duty to the community and
desiring to learn more of what
has happened to the rest of
Britain, sets out on a journey of
exploration. This journey across
Britain from east to west is a
series of incidents and conversa-
tions with different groups of
survivors, not active-adventure,
and although interesting falls
short of being attention-holding.

The book, if message it has,
conveys the proposition that
Britain is a far better place

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as an agricultural community,
scratching a bare living from the
soil, than as a manufacturing,
inventive land of teeming millions
of “ townies ” who (according to
the author) have little survival
value, either physical or cultural.
Just the same, I can’t help feel-
ing that the people in it are a
pretty unambitious lot who could
have done a lot better for them-
selves (than the author has let
them) if a few wide-awake types
had survived. For example, in the
Isle at the early days of the
disaster there are a lot of “ un-
employed ” townsfolk who have
to be supported in idleness. At
the same time there is only one
forge, no power, a couple of
windmills and little else of pro-
ductive value. There are quite
a few “ townies ” employed as
fitters and panel-beaters who
could turn to a little smith’s
work if the need arose; a car-
penter (“ townie ” or not) would
be just as useful as a farm-hand.
None of these stolid farming
types could apparently envisage
the use of a land yacht over the
vast system of railtracks in the
fen country — and this I find hard
to believe, as I know many
farmers who are ardent yachts-
men. If the author has failed in
some respects in this book, I feel
it is that she has credited her
fellow men with too little in-
genuity and ambition.

And so much for this month —
except to repeat an old appeal of
mine — if you notice a science-
fiction book newly out we’ve not
mentioned, please let us know.
We may not review it, but pub-
lishers seem to disguise so many
s-f books as something else these
days that we are always thankful
for the information.

rAN€i^4>4A

WALTER WILLIS writes for you —

If my calculations are correct,
and I figure this is bound to
happen sometime by the law of
averages, this column should be
making its appearance just about
the time Nebula’s first four-part
serial is sweeping majestically
towards its climax. In the cir-
cumstances, maybe I should try
and tell you something about its
author, Mr. H. Kenneth Bulmer.
As a matter of fact the only
reason I haven’t done this before
is that I know too much about
him. No, relax, this isn’t going
to be a Sunday newspaper ex-
posure of authors in the Nebula
stable kicking over the traces, it’s
just that I know and like Ken
Bulmer too well to be confident
I can do him justice. When you
don’t know very intimately the
people you’re writing about you
have no trouble with selection.
All you do is pass on to the
reader your impressions of them
and you have done your best:
he has a nice clear little picture
of the subject, on thin cardboard,
just hke yours. But I have
known Ken Bulmer very well for
more than ten years. I have put
him up in my house and he has
put up with me in his, and we
have spent holidays together in
various rainswept bungalows
along the Irish coast. So when I
think of him I’m inclined to for-

get the respected professional
author : I tend to remember
a bleary-eyed figure leaning
against the kitchen doorway say-
ing something like, “ The best
thing about having a hardboiled
cigarette for breakfast is that you
have time to smoke an egg.”

Ken Bulmer is about thirty-
five, dark-haired, wears glasses
and has what in other people
might be called round shoulders
but in his case is obviously a
scholarly stoop. When I first
met him he owned a vehicle
which in deference to the feelings
of the automobile industry I
always referred to as a horseless
carriage. The importance of this
contraption to the history of
science fiction was that one
journey in it so harrowed the
soul of a friend of mine that he
wrote an account of it in a fan
magazine, and this was the start
of the writing career of another
pillar of British science fiction,
James White. Eventually, hav-
ing fulfilled its destiny and
understandably depressed by the
gloomy prognostications of all
Ken’s friends, the engine of the
vehicle did fall out. Leaving it
smoking in the road, Ken mar-
ried a vivacious brunette called
Pamela who is still in good
running order and now drives
him. They live in an old house

109

NEBULA

with a red door in an endless
road in South East London.

At the time I first met him,
Ken had no thought of being a
professional author, though I
was publishing fiction by him in
my fan magazine. The nearest
either of us had got to profes-
sional publication at that time
was a short story we collaborated
on one Sunday morning in
Regent’s Park Zoo, about the
crew of a spaceship who were
wrecked on the nigm side of an
unknown planet and were eaten
one by one by various kinds of
horrible monsters until dawn,
when the lone survivor found
they had landed inside a wall
bearing the notice “ Please Do
Not Feed The Animals ”. This
story was at one time to be pub-
lished by a reckless professional
editor in Australia, but the pub-
lishers got wind of it and
promptly went into voluntary
liquidation. Undismayed, and
encouraged by Pamela, Ken
fought on and is now one of the
very few people able to make a
living by whole-time science
fiction writing.

As well as the scientific know-
ledge shown in his stories and as
half of Kenneth Johns, Ken is a
mine of information on all sorts
of odd subjects, from sailing
ships and aerodynamics to old
weapons and fortifications. But
I wouldn’t like you to think he is
just a dilettante, an academic
theorist. He puts his knowledge
to sound practical use, as you
would realise if you saw the
fantastic gaUeons and brigan-
tines he makes for my children
out of old Woodbine packets and
iced lollie sticks. Or witnessed
him flying his own design of a
kite, half strangled in a cocoon

of a pecuhar string we had got
from the local general store, so
bent on its own destruction we
called it the Gaderene twine. Or
defying the incoming tide inside
a beautifully castellated and com-
plex fort of sand. As Wilde said,
simple pleasures are the last
refuge of the complex, and Ken
is one of those all too rare
people who have the capacity to
preserve in maturity the joyous
enthusiasm of childhood. In this,
perhaps, is the sense of wonder
so many of us miss in current
science fiction? If so, Ken
Bulmer is the autlior who may
supply it and, if he continues to
show in his published work half
the human understanding that
endears him to his friends, he
may one of these days be a very
great writer.

Reviews

Satellite No. 7. Don Allen,
34a Cumberland St., Gateshead
8, Co. Durham, i/-. The cover
proclaims in huge black capitals,
“ They took this fan . . . they
gave him a gun . . . injected . . .
drilled . . . deported . . . His
fannish spirit yet survived ... to
bring you the full shocking story
. . . It’s Raw . . . Stark . . .
Brutal.” From which you may
gather that the engaging Don
Allen has returned from his
national service with his sense of
humour tmimpaired. This issue
starts off with the first part of
Don’s account of his various
travels and the fans he met in
the course of them and the rest
of the issue, while containing
little about science fiction itself,
is interesting if you would like to
know more about science fiction
fans, or indeed if you are in-
terested in interesting people.

News and Advance Film Reviews Direct from Hollywood’s
FORREST J. ACKERMAN

NIGHT OF THE BLOOD
BEAST is the first film scripted
by 2 1 -year-old Martin Varno,
science fiction fan “ risen from
the ranks ”, whose Wellesian
ambitions extend to acting,
directing and producing as well.
Son of popular actor Roland
Varno, who has played with such
stars at Dietrich and Garbo,
young Varno now plays with
whole star-clusters.

This review — a single time
departure from the usual format
of this department — might be
called “The Biography of an
Abortion A lot of blood flowed
under the bridge from the time
producer Gene Gorman called me
up seeking a writer to do a
hyper-fast script for an ultra-
low budget, and the fatal night a
few brief months later when
Jerome Bixby and I sat on either
side of squirming scriptwriter
Varno at the preview of his first
picture, holding his hands ... to
prevent him from slitting his
throat. The gutteral sounds in
the theatre were not all emerg-
ing from the creature from
Galaxy 27 on the screen. Despite
the tranquillising effect of a shot
of soma, Varno twitched like he’d

swallowed a Mexican jumping
bean. He looked like he wanted
to join the Shrinking Man in
incredible smallness.

Upon stepping (correction :
being carried) into the foyer at
the finis, the first words of the
author were : “I wish I had
enough money to buy the picture
and burn it!” The average lay-
man from the audience, passing
by and chancing to overhear this
remark, might understandably
have felt it defied easy analysis,
but to me, seasoned campaigner
of a thousand Interplanetary Dip-
lomacy Congresses and used for
years to associating with slans,
Varno’s meaning was crystal — ■
even tendrilly — clear : to the
acutely attuned intelligence of
the sensitive superfannish ence-
phalon there could not be the
most miniscule umbra of dubiety
that the scripter was (though this
may come as a shock to some)
disappointed in the result!

Ron Cobb had designed a
magnificent blood-beast. It out-
thinged the Thing. Unfortunately
it was never used; a cast-off hair-
suit from / Was a Teenage Teddy-
Bear or something was apparently
picked up at a $29 rummage sale

III

112

NEBULA

ONE GUINEA PRIZE

To the reader whose Ballot Form
(below) is first opened at the
NEBULA publishing office.

All you have to do, both to win
this attractive prize and to help
your favourite author win the 1958
Author’s Award, is to number the
stories in this issue in the order of
your preference on the Ballot Form
below, or on a postcard if preferred
and mail it immediately to
NEBULA, 159 Crownpoint Road,

Glasgow, S.E.

The Captain’s Dog

Bitter End

Dark Talisman

Undiscovered Country

Wisdom ot the Gods-Pt. 4

Name and Address ;

Mr. D. E. Beesley, of Belfast,
wins the One Guinea Prize offered
in Nebula No. 32. The final result
of the poll on the stories in that
issue was :

1. WISDOM OF THE

GODS— Pt. 1

By Kenneth Bulmer 18’1%

2. SENSE OF

PROPORTION

By E. C. Tubb 15-0%

3. THEY SHALL INHERIT

By Brian W. Aldiss 15-0%

4. NO TIME AT ALL

By Mark Patrick 14-3%

6. CARRIAGE PAID

By William Aitken 13-3%

6. WORDS AND MUSIC

By Bertram Chandler 12-8%

7. BIGHEAD

By W. T. Webb 11-5%

The result of the poll on the
stories in this issue will appear in
Nebula No. 38.

and reconstituted with a beak
and some dyed-green excelsior,
so the alien looked like he was
ailin’ when it came close-up
time.

For the records: I wasn’t as
appalled with the end product
as my supercritical client was,
who said, “ Forty, I won’t hold
it against you: I know you can’t
write a good review of it.” I
have seen far worse scientifilms,
and so have you. One thing 1
give this picture praise for: it
goes out of its way to give the
alien an even break. There are
pleas for sanity like: “ Why not
give the creature an opportunity
to convey to us why it’s here? —
It doesn’t kill just for the blind
pleasure of killing — If you were
a creature in a strange place, and
wanted to communicate with its
inhabitants, but every time you
tried, they moved against you,
the only way to break through
to them would be to take a
hostage, wouldn’t it? It’s been
acting in fear and self protec-
tion.” And the Creature asks:
“ Does it make me evil because
my body is not the same as yours?
You fight great wars because
your brother speaks a different
language. You kill because some-
body else’s philosophy does not
coincide with yours. Because I
am different you must not inter-
pret me as an embodiment of
evil.” This might be Ray
Bradbury speaking the theme of
his own, earlier, IT CAME
FROM OUTER SPACE; I be-
lieve it was the elder Gorman
brother expressing a personal
philosophy through the mouth-
piece of Martin Varno; Varno
plans to speak his own piece in
CALL ME BROTHER.

Continued from inside front cover

1572^ “ Tycho’s Star ” appear ed^ being as bright as Venus^ then gradually
died away^ becoming invisible after 16 months. Kepler himself discovered a
nova in 1604 as bright as the planet Jupiter. It remained visible for almost
two years.

The astronomical telescope^ the camera and the spectroscope now form
the main instruments used by astronomers to study novae.

When a star turns nova, its rise to maximum brightness is very rapid
indeed, the time being as short as two days. For example Nova Aquilae, 1918,
increased its output of energy by over 20,000 times in under four days. This
output is not maintained for long. A decline, rapid at first, takes place with
irregular fluctuations being superimposed on the main fall in brightness.
The rate of fall decreases and perhaps a year later the brightness is less than
a hundredth that attained during the outburst. Most novae follow this
pattern; a few are unusual and tend to remain very bright for weeks or
months.

The study of a nova’s spectrum yields much information. It changes
as rapidly as its brightness. The spectral lines, originating in the outer parts
of the star, show large shifts towards the violet. Measurements of these
displacements lead astronomers to believe that the stellar gases are rushing
outwards at hundreds, if not thousands of miles a second. For Nova
Lacertae, the velocity reached 2,000 miles a second.

In addition to this Doppler shift, bright bands appear, characteristic of
hot gases. Later, a spectrum similar to those given by gaseous nebulae
appears, to disappear some years later.

All this gives a picture of a star expanding explosively due to some
deep-seated over-production of energy and throwing off one or more shells
of hot gas. Some six months after the initial observation of Nova Aquilae,
a shell in fact was seen in large telescopes, expanding year after year. Other
novae have been found to develop these expanding nebulous envelopes and
it has been suggested by some astronomers that the mysterious planetary
nebulae, those hot, white stars surrounded by a shell of gas, are the remains
of novae, or more probably, supernovae explosions.

For in addition to novae, a second, rarer class of explosive star exists
— the supernova, which at its brightest shines with the light of a whole
galaxy, that is, with the light of ten million Suns or more.

The Crab Nebula in Taurus, shown here, may be the wreckage of such
an explosion where half the mass of a star is dispersed into space. Work by
Lampland, Duncan and others has shown that the expanding gases in the
Crab had a central origin about 900 years ago. Chinese observers in 1054
A.D. noted a new star in that part of the sky.

The rapid development in the past thirty years of our knowledge of the
interiors of stars has provided some glimpses of the possible cause of nova
and supernova outbursts. The rate of output of stellar energy is rigidly
controlled by central pressures and temperatures in a feedback system that
adjusts the stellar interior so as to keep it in equilibrium. But any sudden
increase in pressure that produces a sharp rise in temperature might in-
itiate catastrophic chain reactions sufficiently energetic to disrupt the star.
The outer layers of a large star are supported not only by the pressure of
the deeper layers but also to a large extent by the mechanical pressure of
the outpouring radiation. If a star’s radiation pressure is suddenly reduced,
perhaps because its nuclear fuel supply is exhausted, the outer layers, de-
prived of support, will collapse. Some astronomers believe this collapse may
be sudden, giving the high central pressures and temperatures that make
the star go nova or supernova.

It’s comforting to remember that astrophysicists believe the Sun has
some 10,000,000,000 years of steady life ahead of it before it exhausts its
fuel supply for, if it did turn nova, eight minutes later the Earth would
cease to exist.

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